Tuesday 20 December 2022

Adafruit MacroPad RP2040 Starter Kit

Adafruit MacroPad RP2040 contains a built in Raspberry Pi 2040 processor, 3x4 Neopixel RGB keypad, a rotary encoder and a STEMMA QT connector.

The rotary encoder also functions as the Pico's BOOTSEL button.
The RP2040 processor is just to the left of the display cable. Originally I thought this used a separate Raspberry Pi Pico board and so left this until I could get a Pico W with pre-soldered headers. Once I managed to buy one, I discovered it was complete.
There is  a QWIIC/STEMMA I2C on the right hand side of the board, plus a RESET button just above it. Below the first row of keys is a buzzer.
The Starter Kit has a decorated back plate, one side includes Voyager artwork.
The other side has artwork resembling the Apollo flight computer.
There is a reinforcing plate.
The kit includes four screws to hold the boards together, plus four feet and a rotary knob.



The device is programmable either using CircuitPython or Arduino.