Banana Pi BPI-Pico-RP2040 – Raspberry Pi Pico replica gets USB-C port, I2C connector, and RGB LED

Banana Pi BPI-Pico-RP2040 is basically a clone of the original Raspberry Pi Pico, but with the addition of an RGB LED and a 4-pin I2C connector, and the company replaced the micro USB port with a Type-C connector.

The rest of the board, also called Banana Pi Pico, is exactly the same up to the through holes and castellated holes for the I/Os, and has a similar form factor as the Banana Pi BPI-PicoW-S3 that adds WiFi and Bluetooth through the ESP32-S3 wireless microcontroller.

Banana Pi BPI-Pico-RP2040 specifications:

• MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ up to 133 MHz with 264KB SRAM
• Storage – 2MB QSPI flash
• USB – 1x USB 1.1 Type-C port used for power and programming
• Expansion
  • 2x 20-pin 2.54mm pitch header and castellated holes with 26 GPIOs, 3x 12-bit ADC up to 500 Kbps, 2x UART, 2x I2C, 2x SPI, 16x PWM, 2x programmable high-speed I/O (for SD card, VGA, etc…)
  • 4-pin JST I2C connector
  • 3.3V I/O voltage
• Debugging – 3-pin Arm Serial Wire Debug (SWD) port
• Misc – BOOTSEL button, user LED (GP25), Neopixel RGB LED
• Power Supply – 5V via USB Type-C port
• Dimensions – 56 x 21mm

The Banana Pi BPI-Pico-RP2040 is actually slightly longer than the Raspberry Pi Pico with the mounting holes close to the USB Type-C port in a different position. The board can be programmed with MicroPython or Arduino, and a few more technical details can be found in the wiki.

I’m not exactly sure who would want this board since it’s more expensive than the Raspberry Pi Pico with little extra to offer, and other alternatives such as the WeAct RP2040 offer a similar set of features at a lower price and/or the ability to select a higher capacity SPI flash. They did not even bother to add the often-requested Reset button. But if you’d like to give it a try the Banana Pi Pico can be purchased for $5.26 plus shipping ($10+ in total to Thailand) on Aliexpress.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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