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Another Arduino Clone (Powered by RP2040)-Opinion/Suggestions Needed

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Atul Ravi
(@atulravi)
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Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 10
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Hello readers!
For the past few months, I have been working on a design where the RP2040 is the main chip in the Arduino form factor which can act as a drop-in replacement for the UNO especially in Educational and Automation related projects and products. Also, I am posting it in the Arduino section since the board is related equally to the Pico and the Arduino. Also, both boards are MCUs,

 so I hope it's all right.
The board is in the Same form factor headers and all with the only exception being 2 mounting holes being made into one. Another thing I have done is add USB C.
The keen reader might say that Adafruit has already made the board. The Adafruit metro rp2040. But there are some characteristic differences. Primarily being the fact that the Adafruit board exposes only the 13+7 GPIO while mine gives access to all GPIOs to the final user. Another would be cost. Also, literally a month after I started the design of the board, Adafruit released their own version of the board which is a damn shame on my part since I was not fast enough. But oh well!
Shields exist, but having to solder something as a beginner is something that will be tense especially when the person using is a student. Also, expanders and shields that convert the Pico to an Arduino form factor lack the power supply pins which is an added negative for those who choose to power the board externally.
At the moment, I am considering crowdfunding and getting each board out at 7-8USD a pop. But since the Pico itself is 4USD, I am not sure whether it is appealing enough. But my board does come with a 16mB while the original Pico comes with 2mB. So, the primary differentiator would be the cost, storage and GPIO count.
If I choose to proceed with manufacture, I am sure, a price drop in the main PCB itself which is currently at 200INR (~2.5USD) can be brought down to maybe even 80-100INR (~1-1.5$).
But I primarily want to know what the readers of the forum think about the board. Whether it would be something useful. And in general, do let me know regarding your thoughts and if possible, I am happy to make changes or even reconsider any decision I may make.
Photos of the first version of the board and KiCad renderings of the second (which is currently being fabricated) are attached to the post.
(PS. It is fully opensource and most of the debugging has been done in the "Microcontrollers" section of the forum with help from quite a few passionate engineers and hobbyists!)
Github

Repo:  https://github.com/atulravi/picuno

v2 back
v2 front
IMG 0514
IMG 0513
IMG 0515

 


   
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