The Bubbleworks Gets Your Raspberry Pi Pico, Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect Talking to micro:bit Gear
Compact adapter boards get your RP2040-based boards up and running with BBC micro:bit and Raspberry Pi HAT accessories.
UK-based The Bubbleworks has released a pair of adapter boards designed to bring accessories built for the BBC micro:bit to the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect or the Raspberry Pi Pico, by acting as a carrier board with a pin-compatible edge connector.
"The micro:bit has been around for a number of years [and] has a large number of accessories [which] have been produced, many of which I have purchased and made projects with," The Bubbleworks' Wayne Keenan explains of his desire to build the adapters, "so I wanted to make those accessories easily connectable."
The result is a pair of circuit boards, the bottom of which mimics the pin-out of the BBC micro:bit — including the large holes designed for use with crocodile clips or conductive thread, breaking out power and three of the general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins.
The top of the boards, meanwhile, accept either a Raspberry Pi Pico for the PicoBit or the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect for the NanoBit — using low-profile female pin headers, which can be supplied as an optional extra, to allow either board to be inserted and removed at will.
As an added bonus, the board also allows a BBC micro:bit to Raspberry Pi HAT adapter to be used, extending the hardware support still further. To help people get started, The Bubbleworks has also written some examples — including Arduino control of the MeArm robot arm and some CircuitPython examples for controlling various BBC micro:bit add-ons from Kitronik, Mime, Pimoroni, and ProtoPic.
The NanoBit and PicoBit are both available now priced at $7.50, plus an extra $1 for headers, on The Bubbleworks' Tindie store. Documentation and examples, meanwhile, can be found on the company's GitHub repository.