Cheap little computer

[lovebug]

These things are dirt cheap, im thinking of starting a few projects with them

https://www.waveshare.com/rp2040-pizero.htm

[BigEd]

Ah, like a Pico but in a Pi Zero form factor (with 40 pin header)

[mogwaay]

The DVI port is interesting, wonder if it has the power to substitute the Zero in the RGBtoHDMI? Would need a big rewrite tho I imagine...

[paulb]

The DVI port is interesting, wonder if it has the power to substitute the Zero in the RGBtoHDMI? Would need a big rewrite tho I imagine...

I think all the RP2040 DVI solutions involve overclocking the microcontroller, although it doesn't stop vendors selling boards for such purposes. See, for example, adafruit / PicoDVI.

[arg]

Yes, this is one of those sad situations where someone does a hack project just to show it can be done, then loads of people copy it thinking that's the right way to do it.

There are projects around with a proper driver chip behind the HDMI (and which don't necessarily require overclocking), but it doesn't look like this is one of them.

[lovebug]

im not sure if this is overclocked ? looking at the specs on the page shows cpu clock up to 133MHz and on-board DVI interface ?

Code: Select all

Board specifications

RP2040-PiZero is a high-performance and cost-effective microcontroller board designed by Waveshare, onboard DVI interface, TF card slot and PIO-USB port, compatible with Raspberry Pi 40PIN GPIO header, easy to develop and integrate into the products.

    RP2040 microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the United Kingdom
    Dual-core ARM Cortex M0+ processor, flexible clock running up to 133 MHz
    264KB of SRAM, and 16MB of onboard Flash memory
    Onboard DVI interface can drive most HDMI screens (DVI compatibility required)
    Supports using as a USB host or slave via onboard PIO-USB port
    Onboard TF card slot for reading and writing TF card
    Onboard Lithium battery recharge/discharge header, suitable for mobile scenarios
    USB 1.1 with device and host support
    Drag-and-drop programming using mass storage over USB
    Low-power sleep and dormant modes
    2 × SPI, 2 × I2C, 2 × UART, 4 × 12-bit ADC, 16 × controllable PWM channels
    Accurate clock and timer on-chip
    Temperature sensor
    Accelerated floating-point libraries on-chip
    8 × Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support

[lovebug]

@arg I think you are right it is probably overclocked, I've been looking at the PCB and cannot see any dedicated video driver chip

[scruss]

Looks like it has the wrong video output for kilog's b-em for Raspberry Pi Pico/RP2040