Adafruit, Pimoroni, Seeed Studio, Solder Party, SparkFun, WIZnet and More Unveil Their RP2350 Boards
An embarrassment of riches as the first third-party RP2350 devices are announced — including some with added pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM).
When Raspberry Pi announced the RP2350 family of microcontrollers, its first to feature RISC-V cores and a major specification boost over the original RP2040, it also announced the in-house Raspberry Pi Pico 2 — but it's not alone: third-party boards based on the same chip are now available, offering everything from smaller footprints to higher specifications.
Yesterday's unveiling of the RP2350, Raspberry Pi's second in-house microcontroller design and third in-house chip, brought with it changes designed to address almost every criticism anyone had about the earlier RP2040: newer and faster Arm Cortex-M33 cores, almost twice the memory, support for up to 16MB of external pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), an additional programmable input/output (PIO) block for up to 12 state machines, and the surprise inclusion of a pair of processor cores based on the free and open source Hazard3 design.
While the RP2350 powers Raspberry Pi's own Pico 2 board, it's not alone on the market: a broad range of companies have announced their own RP2350 devices, taking advantage of the major performance and security upgrades on offer from the new part. Sheffield, UK-based Pimoroni was one of the first, announcing a small form factor PGA2350 breakout board, the slightly-larger USB Type-C capable Tiny2350, and the Pico Plus 2 — an alternative to the official Raspberry Pi Pico 2 offering 16MB of flash rather than the usual 4MB and 8MB of PSRAM.
The company has also confirmed that it is upgrading its application-specific boards, announcing a Plasma 2350 LED control board, while also launching the Explorer — an "electronics playground" that pairs a built-in display with a solderless breadboard area for on-the-go development and experimentation. As an early adopter of the original Raspberry Pi RP2040, more Pimoroni designs are expected to follow in the coming weeks and months.
Adafruit, another RP2040 fan, has announced its own range of boards built around the new RP2350, starting with the Adafruit Feather RP2350, which packs 8MB of flash and a flat flexible circuit (FFC) connector for the RP2350's new high-speed transmission (HSTX) peripheral. The company has also confirmed an Arduino UNO-format board, the Metro RP2350, and — as with Pimoroni — more designs are expected to follow in due course. SparkFun, likewise, has announced an RP2350 design: the SparkFun Pro Micro, which — like Pimoroni's Pico Plus 2 — includes 16MB of flash memory and 8MB of PSRAM.
Solder Party has updated its own designs to use the new chip, offering a small-footprint RP2350 Stamp along with a feature-packed RP2350 Stamp XL design — the latter of which comes with a new carrier board option. WIZnet has announced the W5100S-EVB-Pico2, W5500-EVB-Pico2 and W6100-EVB-Pico2, Raspberry Pi Pico 2 clones which include on-board wired Ethernet, while Where Labs has announced planned Bus Pirate 5XL and Bus Pirate 6 debug devices using the new chip. For the roboticists, Cytron Technologies has designed the MOTION 2350 Pro, while Seeed Studio has a compact XIAO RP2350 board that provides access to 19 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins despite its small size.
Arguably the most interesting new product announcement is the Thumby Color, a tiny handheld console — looking for all the world like someone shrank a Nintendo Game Boy Advance in the wash — which uses the Raspberry Pi RP2350 to drive a 128×128 16-bit color IPS TFT display. Designed by TinyCircuits as a successor to the company's earlier Thumby, the Thumby Color lets users write their own games in MicroPython — and is now funding on Kickstarter, with rewards starting at $49.
Raspberry Pi is maintaining a list of third-party RP2350-powered boards on its website; some are available to order now, while others are still in the prototyping stage.