First Look at the Adafruit Feather RP2040 – Great Pico Alternative?

This video gives you a first look at the Feather RP2040 board from Adafruit. This board is a great alternative to the Raspberry Pi Pico for projects where you need some extra features! The Feather RP2040 uses the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller and has 8MB of on board flash storage and a USB-C connector. It also features a user programmable RGB Neopixel LED on the topside of the board. It has an on-board LiPo charger which can charge 3.7 or 4.2 volt LiPo batteries at up to 200mA. In many ways it acts just like the Raspberry Pi Pico, just with far more features - including a reset button! It measures in at 50.8 x 22.8 x 7mm.

Programming the Feather RP2040 is exactly the same as programming the Pico. Just press the boot select button whilst plugging the USB-C cable in and drag and drop the UF2 file onto the Feather RP2040. It will then reboot and run your program! It can also be programmed in MicroPython and CircuitPython.

Let me know in the comments if you would like to see some projects featuring this board!

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[interestingspagetti]

I'm becoming quite a fan from the video's you have produced so far. Keep up the good work. I've actually just picked up a pico and having not attempted to learn python yet. Your arduino ide video will come in very handy. You are very concise and clear in your explainations. You should consider doing some tutorial video's on programming. 4k subscribers in 2 months is very impressive too.

[scharkalvin]

Feather has 4 times as much flash memory, but costs 3 times as much as the RpPico. Pico also has more I/O pins exposed.

[matthiassuess]

Very good and clear presentation of the new Feather Board. I find the flash size of 8MB and USB Type C great. I find it a pity that the board is not designed for external power supplies. I'm looking forward to your next video in the series. Thank you very much. Many greetings from Germany, Matthias

[nabeelahsan]

Was eagerly waiting for your video on the Adafruit Feather

[ejennings]

Very good overview, keep up the great videos.

[migilmor_trains_and_tips]

Much appreciated your video on Adafruit's pico feather. Got two to try out to run stepper motors. Being in Canada shipping was faster but the price is high compared to product. Keep up the good work.

[scottwilliams]

Good summary video, thank you! Several times you describe battery specs as "up to 200 milli-amp-hours (mAh)", a measure of *energy storage capacity*, and you write the same in the description, which I found confusing. And the LiPo battery you demonstrated is clearly labeled as "1800 mAh".

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. Or perhaps you meant to say & write "200 mA" *power*, for the charging rate?

[jamesgoacher]

I may have missed it and will watch again to check but I cannot recall you mentioning if it was BreadBoard friendly.
The Battery charging outlet looks very close to some pins. Is it close enough to be a problem with soldering the header pins?
Many thanks.

[charlesje]

I got one of these adafruit feather micropython boards and shortly after I ended up giving away boxes of old parts. These little boards replace a lot of bits and pieces from previous projects.

[rob]

Horses for courses. if your project doesn’t need the extra stuff, why pay the extra money? Just use a pico. If you pull your projects apart afterwards and reuse the parts, then maybe consider this one. I see no reason to not have both 😁

[pobeydishner]

Great video! Can the next video show a 10 pin SWD header (surface mount 0.050 pins) added to the Feather, and connection to an inexpensive JTAG debugger that uses the 10 pin connection? Looking forward to next steps in C/C++...

[ProfessorVector]

Thank you. Can one core run C/C++ code and the other core uPython?

[eFeXuy]

You could hack together a nice handheld console with this one, not need extra circuitry for the battery. If only I had a 3d printer.

[jbammi]

Thanks as always for your informative reviews. You mentioned it in passing, I am hoping you will go more in depth on the SWD and debugging in general, not the print or software debugger debugging, but in circuit and remote debugging using SWD. Thanks

[alanjrobertson]

Nice video. Not sure I agree re the Pico should have been this though - it sounds more like a Pico+? The great thing is still RP2040 so lots of options for people 👍😀

[LittleRainGames]

The only thing truly amazing about the pico is the PIO. Which should be named differently, most of the time PIO means Parallel input output peripheral.
But you could easily just use a CPLD, especially the cheap atmel ones.

[JonS]

Your links in the description are wrong. You don't have a link to a video on Pimoroni's Tiny 2040. Instead you have labeled the link to the Adafruit Feather RP2040, "Tiny 2040".

[turanamo]

I think SparkFun RP2040 Thing Plus beats it with an sdcard slot, easy 1.27mm jtag header, and increased 16MB flash memory

[chrisnurse]

Do you think the lack of Bluetooth is a thing? Seems odd in this day of connected things.

[CooChewGames]

Surely it is just enough to have choice in boards having what you need as opposed to a "killer"?