Low-Cost Interposer Board Brings the Keyboard FeatherWing to the Raspberry Pi Pico
$3 brings the upcycled BlackBerry keyboard goodness to the Raspberry Pi Pico, as an alternative to Feather form factor boards.
Psuedonymous maker arturo182 has launched an interposer board that brings Raspberry Pi Pico compatibility to the Keyboard FeatherWing, originally built for handheld Feather-format projects.
Unveiled by its designer last year, the Keyboard FeatherWing accepts any Feather-format microcontroller board and interfaces it to a full-color 2.6" 320x240 touch-screen display. Below that is a five-way joystick and four buttons, found just above a physical keyboard upcycled from old BlackBerry handsets.
In short, it's a handheld marvel - and it's now compatible with the Raspberry Pi Pico and its RP2040 microcontroller.
"The Pico boards are quite capable and very cheap, so they make a good alternative to Feather boards for the FeatherWing," arturo182 writes of his creation. "Additionally, no extra components are needed to adapt the Pico to a FeatherWing, making the adapter cost low."
The interposer board brings all the features of the Keyboard FeatherWing to the Raspberry Pi Pico, with one exception: "Because the Pico only has 3 analog pins," arturo182 notes, "only A0, A1, and A5 of the Keyboard FeatherWing can actually be used to read analog values."
The board is available on the Solder Party Tindie store now at just $3, with the Keyboard FeatherWing adding $55 on top including keyboard and display; design files for the board have been published to GitHubs under the permissive CERN Open Hardware Licene v1.2.