Solder Party's Latest FlexyPin Board Gives a Raspberry Pi Pico or Pico W an Arduino Uno Form Factor

Solder Party has launched an adapter which converts the Raspberry Pi Pico or Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller board to an Arduino Uno form factor — using the company's clever FlexyPins to allow the board to removed and reinserted at will.

"This board gives the Raspberry Pi Pico a Uno form factor," the company explains of its open-hardware design. "Makes it possible to use Uno shields with the Pico without having to solder the Pico in place. All you need are FlexyPins!"

Mimicking the iconic spacing of the ever-popular Arduino Uno, the adapter board is entirely passive. FlexyPins, not supplied but available as an extra, are soldered into the board to push against the castellated pin headers of a Raspberry Pi Pico or wireless-capable Raspberry Pi Pico W ― then the pins are brought out to the Arduino Uno-format headers, along with an extra Serial Wire Debug (SWD) connector to the bottom of the board. Alternatively, the Raspberry Pi Pico can be attached using standard pins — or soldered directly as a surface-mount module.

Compatibility between an adapted Raspberry Pi Pico and an original Arduino Uno isn't one-to-one: the Raspberry Pi Pico family of boards uses 3.3V logic, while the Arduino Uno is 5V — and the Raspberry Pi Pico isn't 5V safe. It also exposes fewer analog pins, which may cause a problem for certain shields — but the pin-mapping was specifically chosen to allow for an eight-bit 3.5" parallel display shield to work without difficulty.

Solder Party is selling the board on its Lectronz store as a soldering kit for just $1.50, including socket headers and a physical reset button — with a pack of 100 FlexyPins available at an extra $6. The KiCad project files, meanwhile, are available on GitHub under the CERN Open Hardware License v1.2.