01Space RP2040-0.42LCD Dev Board Pairs a Teeny-Tiny Display Panel with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU
Compatible with CircuitPython, MicroPython, and the Arduino IDE, this board packs features into a surprisingly small footprint.
Chinese embedded electronics specialist 01Space has launched an Arduino, MicroPython, and CircuitPython-compatible compact development board powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller — and a display that's almost as small as the USB Type-C port that powers it: the RP2040-0.42LCD.
"RP2040-0.42LCD is a high-performance development board [with] integrated 0.42" LCD (70×40 resolution) with flexible digital interfaces," its creators claim of the design, which was brought to our attention by CNX Software. "It incorporates Raspberry Pi's RP2040 microcontroller chip. The RP2040 features a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor clocked at 133MHz with 264KB internal SRAM [static RAM] and 2MB [external] flash storage."
The board itself features pins down either side for breadboard compatibility and a USB Type-C port to the top for data and power. Just beneath this is the aforementioned display, an ultra-compact glass panel, which is actually built on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) rather than liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology.
Elsewhere on the board are physical reset and boot-select buttons, a single RGB LED linked to the RP2040's GPIO2 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pin, and a power indicator LED. A total of 11 of the RP2040's GPIO pins are brought out to physical pins, including access to all four analog to digital converters (ADCs), two SPI, two I2C, and one UART bus alongside regulated 3.3V, USB 5V, battery, and ground power pins — along with a bonus Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector on the underside for solder-free linking to external sensor boards.
For software compatibility, the 01Space board can be treated as a Raspberry Pi Pico — meaning there's support in both MicroPython and CircuitPython, or it can be used with the Arduino IDE using Earle Philhower's community Arduino core. For the latter, 01Space offers a selection of example programs — including one that loads and displays small animated GIFs on the single-color display.
More details on the RP2040-0.42LCD are available on the 01Space GitHub repository, while boards can be purchased from Banggood for $11.99 including shipping.