Waveshare RP2350-PiZero is an update of the RP2040-PiZero, keeping the Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, but replacing the RP2040 MCU with the more powerful RP2350 dual-core Cortex-M33/RISC-V microcontroller.
The RP2350-PiZero still comes with 16MB flash, a mini HDMI/DVI connector, two USB Type-C ports, a microSD card slot, and a 40-pin GPIO header. It supports 5V power input via USB-C, as well as LiPo batteries via a 2-pin connector and a charging circuit.
RP2350-PiZero specifications:
- MCU – Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350B
- CPU
- Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 @ 150 MHz with Arm Trustzone, Secure boot OR
- Dual-core RISC-V Hazard3 @ 150 MHz
- Either two cores can be used.
- Memory – 520 KB on-chip SRAM
- Package – QFN-80
- CPU
- Memory – PSRAM chip footprint (7)
- Storage
- 16MB SPI flash
- MicroSD card slot
- Video – Mini HDMI port that can output DVI signals
- USB
- 1x USB Type-C port (3) for data using PIO-USB host/device implementation
- 1x USB Type-C port (2) for power and programming
- Expansion – 40-pin color-coded header with 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 2x UART, 4x 12-bit ADC, 16x PWM, 12x Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support
- Debugging – 3-pin debug interface
- Misc
- BOOT and RUN buttons
- Power LED
- Power Supply
- 5V via USB Type-C port
- 2-pin connector for Lithium battery
- Dimensions – 65 x 30mm
Waveshare provides basic instructions to get started with MicroPython, C/C++, and Arduino in the wiki. You’ll also find a few C or Arduino demos there for DVI video output (PicoDVI fork) via the mini HDMI port, USB host/device using PIO-USB, and the microSD card slot. Those are all projects already available for other Raspberry Pi RP2350 boards, but it’s the first Raspberry Pi Zero lookalike based on this specific MCU we’ve seen.
Waveshare sells the RP2350-PiZero for $17.17 on Amazon and $9.99 on the company’s online store. It’s also sold on AliExpress, just not yet on Waveshare’s store, by third-party stores for an unknown price… (I’m being shown a $0.99 welcome deal most people won’t get…)
Thanks to inoremap for the tip.
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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No Wifi, or BT, or Zigbee .. No bueno
What does this have over an ESP32?
A raspberry lasered on the mcu! 1!! 11!
PIO is an interesting little feature that allows you to do some things that would normally be reserved for an FPGA, on a microcontroller.
Apart from that…nothing, to be honest.
A rather bizarre project from Waveshare to be honest.
> for an unknown price
For me the full price shown there (disregarding any welcome deals) is the equivalent of around 15.36 USD before tax.
That price will likely include taxes. I’m shown $0.99 with a strikethrough “US $7.31” with free shipping. The actual price paid before taxes would typically be lower than $7.31, but that’s already lower than the $9.99 on the Waveshare store. So who knows? I don’t always understand AliExpress pricing…
You reference both micro and mini HDMI in the article. It looks like mini.
What are the logistics/purpose/intent to running a multi-core system of differing architectures?
I’d presume you’d have to compile programs separately, but can they run at the same time (doesn’t sound like it “which can be substituted at boot time”), or share the same memory and be able to interact with each other?
It sounds like a “one or the other” sort of thing.
For the RP2350, it was probably to kickstart RISC-V firmware development for future RPi RISC-V MCUs.
Users can select 2x Arm, 2x RISC-V, 1x Arm + 1x RISC-V configuration at boot time.
What would be the use-case of 1xArm+1xRisc? It seems like it’d be wasteful if say you were to have freertos(or zephyros or whatever) separately built for both and both loading up in memory.
This topic has now got me to thinking about such a scenario for multi differing cores, and how I might want to do a march/cpu build targetting for the specific cores capabilities.
Like if I compile a kernel, I assume I’d have to target the cpu core with the fewest capabilities/instructions.
If someone has a link to such a topic, I’d be interested in checking it out.
A custom RISC-V like this might be pretty small. Instead, the CPU caches, the RAM, the on-chip flash (when present) all the peripherals and the pins’ pads take-up most of the chip size.
If the RISC-V reuses the resources of the ARM core, it is tiny amount of unused silicon when turned off.
Small correction for the editor – the RP2350 actually has 12 PIO SMs, 4 more than the original RP2040