Meet the Maker Pi RP2040, a Robot Controller Board

While Raspberry Pi dominates the embedded systems industry, there have been several other alternatives. However, since the release of the Pico that came with the company’s first in-house RP2040 chip, there has been a spark in the developer community. This, in turn, has persuaded a ton of manufacturers to get their hands on the new silicon and design a development board with more features than the Pico. One such company is Cytron, who has launched the Maker Pi RP2040 for robot-controlled applications.

The Maker Pi is capable of driving four servo motors and two DC motors. Its onboard RP2040 is a low-power, high-performance, dual-core Cortex-M0+ processor that runs at up to 133MHz. If you plan to interface with DC motors, then this board has provided two quick test buttons for both the DC motors.

Although we've already seen several interesting projects based on the Pi Pico and other RP2040 boards, it's now time for some robotic builds that'll surely make this $1 chip one of the best-in-class for almost every small application. Cytron has included seven Grove connectors, one of which can even interface motion or physical sensors just to name a few. Rounding out the board are a piezo buzzer, some LEDs, and a pair of push buttons.

If you already own a Raspberry Pi Pico and are used to the existing Pico ecosystem, then you can seamlessly work on this controller board too. Cytron notes that CircuitPython comes preloaded on the Maker Pi RP2040, enabling users to get started fairly easily. As you'd expect, it also supports commonly programming languages, so you are free to use MicroPython and C/C++ for Pico/RP2040 as well.

You can find more details and order you $9.90 Maker Pi RP2040 on its official product page or over on Seeed Studio.