The Pi Pico has problems, so I made my own, the ProPico 

Time to justify to my boss why I'm spinning pro pico boards instead of just buying picos from Mouser...

Now we need a Pro+ Variant with pin numbers

now all I need is that sweet sweet wireless module

You should also try to keep the mounting holes compatible with the original. This make transistion/upgrade much easier

You hit a market 😊 - Congratulations 🎉

Well done 👏👏 This should be the default board for the pico, maybe the Raspberry foundation will take note

I made my own similar boards once for fun. I then realized I didn't need 5 Pi Picos even if they had USB C.

I guess one thing we are left wondering about is the power efficiency. I'm not familiar with the raspberry pi pico, but I'm guessing that it's more efficient than 3.3/5. Despite this probably irrelevent concern , great job on the design. It's really nice and improves on things that the original designers are probably embarassed to have forgotten.

I wish the pico pro would be for purchase somewhere for an also budget friendly price.

super sick. to be honest I never knew about the switching regulator issues on the pico, as i've always spun my own hardware around the RP2040 with the features you've shown.

amen

Nice job! Idea for version 1.2: this board could really benefit from in-built rgb LED like on some ESP32 board. If you'd use adressable kind, then it would need only 1 gpio.

I am currently designing a PCB with the RP2040, so this was quite a bit of help, thanks!

Congratulations with your hackaday article! Nice project!

that is awesome, 100% gonna make some

Simply amazing 🎉

I absolutely love this project.

Yooo I really second this. You really deserve more subs than this!

Super cool project. 👍

The Adafruit KB2040 is also a great RP2040 board with most of these features (type-C, reset and bootloader buttons) and it's in the widely used pro-micro form-factor/pinout so it's compatible with anything that uses that footprint.

Well done 👍👍👍

I love these videos!

Nice job!

Nice improvements, USB-C is definitely the way to go. You may also want to fix the USB VBUSDET connection, to connect to a pin that is defined for that function for the USB hard core on the chip. (it is not in the stock pick design) Though this may mean you'll need a customized BSP for the library config, if you want to properly use the functionality. The library as it is, when configured for a "pico" has some workarounds to use plain GPIO functionality to accomplish the goal. Though I can't remember if it was in the library itself, or just in the code for the examples. Either way the fix should be pretty easy. I'm looking to do the same for a board I'm designing, but still earlier in the development cycle than you.

Astonishing that they put Amundsen’s whole ship in a SOIC

That's a subscribe from me! Great video, loved the dive into what makes a microcontroller board like this better or worse than others. Important with all the cheap board clones out there to know what to look for and what shortcuts others might take.

Brilliant. 👍😀

I would love to be as knowledgeable as you.. maybe i should order a microcontroller to start somewhere

The issue may be the temperature range with your product. Mainly because of the linear power supply. I didnt see any thermal vias your PCB. I'd need to know the temperature range to use it. Other than that, it is definitely superior.

lol you really nailed the pain points

Think you might sell them on crowd supply? these look like some fantastic improvements.

Yes, I am currently already buying chinese "knock-off" pico boards after I got a single official RPi Pico board. They "cheaped out" with an LDO, used type-C instead, and had more than one button (all features I want). If Aliexpress is already making better implementation than you after a couple of weeks, you've done something very wrong, IMHO. Nice project.

my picos are from aliexpress, they have a reset button, another button, 4/16mb rom and a rgb led

my main beef with it is micro usb... it just sucks

Cool!

Literally you said to Raspberry Pi: Skill Issues 🔥

I think that the usb C port on the pro pico should protrude from the pcb so that it can be panel mounted, for instance in a 3d printed case without the pcb being visible. I understand wanting to keep the same pcb dimensions though.

GroundStudio Marble Pico is another "Pro" model of the Pico (I don't have the tools to see how much of an improvement it is over the og pico)

Next iteration should honestly coprocess analog functions with a discrete ADC. Also a decent wireless chip. This would truly be an all-purpose pro board; a mini version, like Adafruit's QT Pi or Seeed's Xiao, would also be nice as an alternative but I also understand that we're starting to pack too many components onto one board. Honestly I just wish the Pi Foundation would release an RP2040 successor that has built-in wireless and an ADC that isn't utterly dogshit, plus more analog I/O would be nice, while still being cost competitive.

would you say you made it pro-per-pico.

hmm that Indian guy messed up and said PFM instead of PWM at 5:41

Hmm, I would also suggest a kinda niche but really interesting market. I know of this thing called the VoCore but it's from 2016. I think a coin sized computer could be done a lot better. If there was a board with a dual or quad core CPU, atleast 2-4gb of ram and a PCie slot like the VoCore that might actually be a really insane thing, especially because it would be a sbc in a somewhat microcontroller sized form factor.

I need this

The only thing I would have a problem with is soldering the RP2040 chip onto the board, looks fiddly to do this by hand.

It's beyond PRO , just saying❤

i need this

You're a G

It's awesome you have the kicad files available, and that PCBWay has a kicad plugin to translate it into a full, proper order with them. I've never used them before, though, so I am not sure exactly how to order what I want. Do you know if they offer something in between PCB-only and their full assembly option? I'd like to try my hand at soldering SMD, but I don't want to source all the parts. I see they have the option to make solder masks. I want "assembly, but skip the last part where you actually solder everything, and instead just dump all the boards, parts, and solder masks into a bag, and mail it to me that way, please."

Without WiFi these are mostly not useful to me. Mostly I use these for remote device control.

a neopixel on there would be cool

If it makes u feel any better. I made my pico with an AMS1117.

Could somebody point out the source for the ADC precision?

I'm not sure if this is something even allowed by the Micro USB spec, but I was tricked this week into thinking I'd fried one of my Pico's. Just completely dead. I tried different USB ports, multiple computers, all three (3!) different spare Micro USB cables I could find... Turns out all three Micro USB cables I have on hand are POWER ONLY. No data connection. Literally the only devices I have that still use Micro USB are Raspberry Pi boards, and I apparently have zero micro USB data cables to spare. Micro USB ports are garbage (yeah, yeah, hot take), and it vexes me that anything is newly designed and manufactured with them. So when can I expect your Pico Pro to be available on Mouser and/or Digikey? 😂

Raspberry founda... Trading stopped improving their line for “normal” end user. Even though those were the ones that sit in companies, that later adapt these into their programs. Seems like it wasn't the smartest idea to become a sell out.

all this “pro” and no ENIG 😧

please put the pinout mask on the top layer not bottom , put the ic on the bottom side :) :) :)

I got pissed off because of what pi5 is, I kind of want to design my own, with M.2 slot on the bottom and optional eMMC. It not only would be much more convenient to use SSDs, but also other PCIe devices, there is big market with all sorts of M.2 adapters to for example 6x SATA. And if possible have the ethernet PHY be on some baby CM like plug-in module that default is 1G but can be replaced with modules that do 2.5G and even maybe 10G. The official pi5 heatsink has got the fins wrong way around and a lot of performance is killed off. It also should have some rugged permanent alternative 5V entry connection like a screw terminal for uses in cars, industrial or automation uses, it could be just a DNF footprint and connector supplied separately for those we need it, this way there's even no cost increase.

What's the cost delta?

do you know of the esp32?

The T-splitters on the oscilloscope without termination can cause reflections also i have a hard time understanding indian accent and there is no side-by-side comparison of the noise

Type C? Shoulda used USB-B.

I want 10 how I do pay you for your work.

por Why C++ and not C?

i don't think you can just throw "wtf why i should disable interrupts while writing to flash" around that easily. first - i think people got too used to atmega chips that not only have internal flash but also have luxurious built in eeprom. second - rp2040 does not have built in flash memory (pointing that out just in case) and so it reads code via XIP from external memory chip - and you simply cannot erase/write to it while cpu fetches instructions from it. if you REALLY wanna do that (like if you wanna react real fast to interrupts), you should move your interrupt handlers code into RAM and remap vector table to tell the core that it's there now. but yeah this isnt really an intuitive and straightforward thing to do for some development platforms because they cover these levers under their hood (arduino, platformio etc.), so we are stuck with "wtf were devs of pico thinking" argument i guess. putting separate memory chip for nonvolatile storage helps, sure, but does not make your board as cheap for mass production as "wtf were they thinking" devs of pico board made it to be.

You meant to say USB-c is more fragile. Micro is better. Look micro has fragile cables and good connectors, C has fragile connectors and KINDA good cables. Micro is the easy choice there.

Who is using the ADC of a pico? Lol

another issue ... the pin labels are still on the bottom 🫠

I still need to finish my own dumb pico board 🧌🧌🧌