Pimoroni's New Plasma 2040 Aims to Make NeoPixel, DotStar LED Strip Projects as Easy as Possible
Powered by the same microcontroller as the Raspberry Pi Pico, this board has one purpose in life: driving LED strips.
Pimoroni has launched a new board powered by the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, but this one's built with a very specific task in mind: driving NeoPixel and DotStar addressable LED strips.
"Plasma 2040 is a RP2040-based driver board for addressable LED strip (also known as magical rainbows by the metre)," Pimoroni explains of the new board. "It's designed to make rigging up bits of custom, programmable lighting as straightforward as possible — perfect for whipping up some quick under-cupboard illumination, dramatically underlighting your sofa or providing some atmospheric mood-lighting for your workspace, PC or vivarium."
The compact board is driven by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, the same chip at the heart of the popular Raspberry Pi Pico. To this Pimoroni has added 2MB of quad-SPI flash with execute-in-place (XiP) support, a USB Type-C connector for power and programming, a Qwiic/STEMMA QT-compatible header for expansion, reset and boot buttons, two user-addressable buttons, and an RGB LED.
At the far end of the board, meanwhile, is a screw terminal designed for connection to WS2812/NeoPixel or APA102/DotStar-compatible LED strips, which gets driven by the RP2040's programmable input/output (PIO) state machines. There's only one connector, but Pimoroni claims with "inventive wiring" it's possible to connect multiple strips — even of different types.
The board is programmable using any RP2040 firmware, including C/C++, MicroPython, and CircuitPython, and includes current-sensing capabilities linked to the microcontroller's analog input. Unused pins, meanwhile, are broken out to headers at the side.
The Plasma 2040 is available from Pimoroni priced at $14.73, while the company has also published a getting started guide for producing a simple busy light.