Sam Hocevar's Project-piCo Continues with a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Clone — Adding USB Type-C
A mystery component and dead links to official schematics, though, mean that the near-final design isn't quite ready for production yet.
Maker Sam Hocevar has announced a work-in-progress clone of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2, the new microcontroller development board powered by the RP2350 chip, which aims to deliver as close a design as possible while switching from the older micro-USB Type-B socket to a new USB Type-C socket — a continuation of what he calls "project-piCo."
"I was extremely excited to see the announcement of the [Raspberry Pi] Pico 2 last week, but some of my enthusiasm left me when I saw that the new board still retained the micro-USB connector," Hocevar explains of the inspiration behind the cloned board. "Of course, I got right to work on correcting this issue."
Hocevar has form for doing exactly this: under the name "project-piCo" he has already designed and released clones of the original RP2040-powered Raspberry Pi Pico and, most recently, the Raspberry Pi Pico W — making two variants, one of which replicates the original's PCB antenna but is being held back pending the expiration of a patent on the technology. The key difference between Hocevar's clones and the originals: the use of a new USB Type-C connector, matching that used for power on the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computers.
"I worked with the schematic and pictures of the board to be able to create an initial version of a Type-C Pico 2," Hocevar explains. "Thankfully, with all the work I've already done on reversing the Pico, making this board was a breeze as I was able to reuse many of my assets and resources from the previous boards."
There's one catch, though: "As-is, this board is not ready for production. I was unable to figure out what component or footprint L2 is," Hocevar admits, "other than that it is a coupled inductor and measures roughly 1.75×2.2mm. As a stand-in, I have placed an 0602 SMD [Surface Mount Device] inductor, but please note that this is not correct."
The design, incomplete as it is, has been published to GitHub as a KiCad project under a permissive public domain license; anyone unwilling to wait for a finished version with the mystery component added can choose from a range of third-party RP2350 boards with USB Type-C announced shortly after Raspberry Pi's grand unveiling last week.