The Best RP2040 Boards (2024) for beginners and experts alike

The Best RP2040 Boards have left an indelible mark on the world of embedded electronics and the enthusiast community, thanks to their remarkable capabilities housed within a compact package. These boards empower an extensive array of microcontroller applications, delivering the essential processing power and versatile input/output options required to excel in diverse projects.

The Raspberry Pi community offers a vast amount of support and resources, both of which are utilized to the fullest by the RP2040 processor, which is known for its extreme ease of use. The RP2040 chip, which is Raspberry Pi’s first foray into the world of micro-controllers, is notable for its small form size, low power consumption, and great performance. As a result, it is an excellent choice for projects that are both cost-effective and complicated.

Furthermore, because the RP2040 chip is open source, any manufacturer is free to include it into their own products. As a consequence, there is a wide variety of RP2040-based boards currently available on the market. These single-board computers each provide a one-of-a-kind set of features and functions, making them ideally suited to meet the distinct demands and preferences of a wide range of projects.

Importance of Choosing the Right RP2040 Board

Choosing the right RP2040 board is important because it has a direct effect on how well your projects or apps work, how they work, and how well they work with other things. Here are some important reasons why it’s important to choose the right RP2040 board:

• Better performance: Different RP2040 boards may have different clock speeds, amounts of memory, and onboard ports. If you choose a board with more features, your projects may run better, with faster processing, smoother operations, and better response.
• Specific Application Requirements: RP2040 boards come in different shapes and sizes and have different interfaces, connectors, and expansion choices. It’s important to think about what your project needs, like special sensors, communication protocols, or compatibility with other hardware. If you choose the right board that fits the needs of your project, integration and performance will go smoothly.
• Development Environment and help: Choosing a famous and well-supported RP2040 board gives you access to a strong development ecosystem, which includes software libraries, documentation, tutorials, and community help. If you choose boards with a large group of users, they can help you solve problems, find examples, and speed up the development process.

Factors to Consider When Choosing RP2040 Boards

When picking RP2040 boards, you should think about a few things to make sure you get the best one for your project. Here are a few important things to think about:

• Purpose and Application: Figure out what the exact goal of your project is and what kind of application you want to make. Different RP2040 boards might have different features, interfaces, or shapes that make them better for certain uses, like robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), wearable devices, or industrial automation. Getting to know what your project needs will help you cut down your options.
• Performance and specs: Figure out how well the RP2040 boards work and what their specs are. Think about things like the clock speed, the amount of memory, the number of GPIO pins, the devices that are available (like USB, UART, SPI, and I2C), and the onboard sensors. For complex applications, you may need faster clock speeds and more memory, and for some functions, you may need special peripherals.
• Size and Form Factor: RP2040 boards come in different forms, such as development boards, modules, or fully integrated systems. Think about the size and shape that will work best for your project and how it will be used. For example, if you don’t have a lot of room, you might prefer smaller modules or development boards that take up less space.

Best RP2040 Boards Comparison Table

Because of its low price and wide range of applications, Raspberry Pi’s RP2040 has quickly become one of the company’s most popular products. This has made it a popular option among makers and hobbyists.

List of the Best RP2040 Boards

Raspberry Pi is responsible for designing the powerful microprocessor known as the RP2040. Based on this adaptable chip, Raspberry Pi has created a number of different boards. The following are some of the most reliable RP2040 boards currently on the market:

Best Overall: Raspberry Pi PIco #Top3

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The Raspberry Pi PIco, the original and least expensive RP2040 board, can be purchased for just $4. Despite the fact that it offered a sturdy foundation for projects, it did not include Wi-Fi. Although it cost $6 more than its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi Pico W added Wi-Fi connectivity to the Pico while keeping the same pinout as its predecessor.

Using the Raspberry Pi Pico W, connecting to the internet is a piece of cake. It only takes five lines of MicroPython code to establish a connection, and once that’s done, we have a wide variety of choices at our disposal. We now have a data collection gadget that costs only $6, a web-controlled robot, or an information gathering platform that is connected to the Internet.

Adafruit Feather RP2040 #Top3

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Adafruit, an RP2040 project partner, has put out a lot of great RP2040 boards in a short amount of time. The company has its own universe of form factors, and their first RP2040 system was in their biggest one, the Feather. The Feather RP2040 was made to work with a wide range of add-ons called “FeatherWings.” It has fewer pins than a normal Raspberry Pi Pico, but the pins were chosen to give us the best of what the RP2040 can do.

What we lose in GPIO pins, we make up for with onboard LiPo/Li-Ion battery charging, great pin labelling, and Stemma QT, which is Adafruit’s preferred connection for I2C components. With Stemma QT, we don’t have to worry about messy wiring or polarity problems, so we can focus on the project and not on how to wire it. If you want the most useful RP2040 board on the market, you don’t need to look any further.

Thing Plus – RP2040 #Top3

SparkFun moved quickly to produce high-quality RP2040-based versions of its primary families of development boards, including the Pro Micro format, which is a tiny form factor. The Thing Plus – RP2040 stands out among these as a particularly capable illustration. It is only slightly bigger than a Pico and features pinouts that are compatible with Feather.

It also contains 16 MB of flash memory, a JST single-cell battery connector (with a charging circuit and fuel gauge sensor), an onboard LED with a NeoPixel-style display, a reset button, and their unique Qwiic connector. Intriguingly, it also contains a slot for a MicroSD card on the bottom (which is narrow enough to retain breadboard connectivity), which is a feature that many projects would find to be quite handy.

Best RP2040 Boards You Should Buy

If you are interested in learning more about the features that the RP2040 microcontroller has to offer, the following RP2040 boards are some that you should certainly try out:

Adafruit RP2040 Bare Bones Macropad

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Macropads are small keyboards that make it easy to use hotkeys and scripts in the software you use. This makes you more productive. The Adafruit RP2040 Bare Bones Macropad is a cheap and easy way to make your own macropad without having to learn how to code or wire keyboard keys.

The board has a built-in OLED display, 12 MX-style keyboard switch spots that can be changed on the fly, and a rotary encoder. This means that the code that Adafruit gives with this board can be used to switch between different macro settings on the fly. The best part is that it’s simple to learn how to build your own RP2040 macropad.

SparkFun’s Thing Plus – RP2040

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The RP2040 has served as the foundation for multiple incarnations of SparkFun’s primary development boards, which have been introduced over the years. The Pro Micro size, which is a more compact option, is included in these revisions. One product in this category that is particularly impressive in its capabilities is the Thing Plus – RP2040. It is a little bigger than a Pico and comes with pinouts that are compatible with Feather, a JST battery connector (complete with a charging circuit and a fuel gauge sensor), an LED onboard that resembles a NeoPixel, a reset button, and their proprietary Qwic connector. I

n addition to this, it possesses pinouts that are compatible with the Feather standard and 16MB of flash memory. In addition, it has a MicroSD card slot on the bottom (which is narrow enough to protect breadboard connectivity), which is an additional utility that many various kinds of projects might find to be advantageous.

Tips for Maximizing Performance and Functionality

Consider the following tips if you want your RP2040 board to work and perform as well as possible:

• Optimize Code: Write code for your RP2040 projects that works well and is optimized. Use best practices for coding, such as minimizing loops that aren’t needed, making the best use of memory, and avoiding processes that block. Your applications will run much better if you write code that works well.
• Use Hardware Acceleration: Make use of the RP2040 board’s features for hardware acceleration. For example, the RP2040 has a built-in programmable I/O subsystem (PIO) that can take over tasks from the CPU. This lets specific tasks, like data collection, signal processing, or communication protocols, be done faster and more efficiently.
• Use Existing Libraries: Look into and use the libraries and software tools that are already available for RP2040 boards. These libraries can offer pre-built functions, drivers, and application programming interfaces (APIs) to make development easier and improve usefulness. Libraries for communication standards (like SPI and I2C), sensor integration, and graphical user interfaces are some examples.

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