Adafruit's ItsyBitsy RP2040 Brings Raspberry Pi's In-House Microcontroller to a New Form Factor

With its Feather RP2040, the first Adafruit board to feature the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, now officially launched, the company has turned its attention to bringing the same chip to a new form factor with a planned ItsyBitsy RP2040.

The launch of the Raspberry Pi RP2040, the organisation's first microcontroller and first in-house silicon designed by its dedicated application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) team, caused a stir earlier this year — and a number of companies pledged to build their own development boards around the part to sit on the market alongside the Raspberry Pi Pico. Adafruit's first public design was the Feather 2040, which put the RP2040 on a Feather form factor board; now it's back with an ItsyBitsy variant.

"It’s got all that RP2040 goodness — dual-core M0+ at 125 MHz with 264K of RAM — coupled with favorite ItsyBitsy features like an output level shifter on digital pin 5 for robust compatibility with NeoPixels," the company writes of its planned board. "There’s an onboard status RGB NeoPixel, a physical reset button (no re-plugging USB to access the bootloader), a generous assortment of GPIO, and of course… CircuitPython support!"

There are a couple of other tweaks to the design, too, including a switch to 4x4 WSON quad-SPI flash to allow the board to support more than 2MB, and a diode on the USBBOOT — BOOTSEL on the Pico — button which allows it to act as user-configurable input post-boot.

As for when the board will be released, though: "It's not out, so don't ask," Adafruit warns, advising interested parties to sign up on the product page to be notified when the part goes up for sale.