TinyPICO is the world’s smallest, fully-featured ESP32 development board, designed to unlock the power of the ESP32’s dual-core 240MHz and internet connectivity, in a package smaller than your thumb!
Why we made TinyPICO
There are quite a few ESP32 boards on the market, but they all require you to compromise on one or more features. Some don’t have on-board battery management, while some do but they don’t have low deep sleep current. Others have great low-power modes, but are large and not breadboard-friendly, and none of them have extra RAM unless you go for a more expensive and larger WROVER-powered board.
We just weren’t happy with the status quo - we wanted to have our cake and eat it too!
So we designed the smallest un-compromising ESP32 development board in the world, and then went a step further and gave it 4 MB of extra RAM, an on-board RGB LED, and more juice with a 700 mA 3.3 V regulator.
Specs : We have filled every nook on this board, packing a massive 700mA 3.3V regulator, on-board battery management, an RGB LED, 4MB of extra PSRAM and 14 GPIO. TinyPICO is tuned for ultra low current use, dropping as low as 20uA when in deepsleep.
Pinout : We took great care in our GPIO selection both for internal use and broken out pins so you don’t have to worry.
Size: At only 18x32mm and 18x35mm, TinyPICO is the worlds smallest, fully featured ESP32 development board. It’s also very breadboard friendly, offering lots of room on either side.
Processing
32-bit dual-core processor operating at 240 MHz
4 MB SPI flash
4 MB extra PSRAM
Wireless
2.4 GHz Wi-Fi - 802.11b/g/n
Bluetooth BLE 4.2
3D antenna
Power
700 mAh 3.3 V LDO regulator
Optimized power path for low-power battery usage
LiPo battery management
Battery pads on the bottom support both JST PH & MicroBlade connectors (included unassembled with every TinyPICO)
Power (red) & charge (orange) LEDs
Form-factor
Breadboard-friendly
Oh, it’s tiny! Just 18 mm x 32 mm
Product Weight: 2.0g / 0.1oz
Connectivity
14x GPIO broken out to standard pitch headers
USB + serial/UART for programming
APA102 RGB LED
Control
MicroPython pre-installed
Supports Arduino IDE
Supports Espressif IDF
Lots of example code and libraries
TinyPICO has been designed with two isolated power paths: a 5 V path and a 3.3 V path. Any components that are not needed for operation via battery or via the 3.3 V power pin are isolated within the 5 V power path, and are totally shut down when no USB cable is plugged in.
In-fact, even the power & charge LEDs are shutdown when no 5 V power source is present.
Deep sleep has been optimised for all development platforms, and though we have seen it go as low as 10 uA, our official current rating in deep sleep is 20 uA.
Note: TinyPICO includes an on-board APA102 RGB LED that has a quiescent current of 1 mA.
Thankfully we have a solution for deep sleep. GPIO13 controls the power to the APA102 using a P-Channel MOSFET via a high-side switch that can (along with smoother IO settings) shut down the power to the APA102 for you. It’s essential to do this before going into deep sleep to ensure the lowest current draw possible.
We have created some helper functions for you in our TinyPICO MicroPython & Arduino helper libraries to make this easy. Please check the code in the platform you use to understand how to shut down the APA102 correctly as just pulling GPIO13 high is not enough.
We have made TinyPICO hardware and software open source. You can find the design files and our code in the TinyPICO GitHub repository.
Please read the open source licenses and branding rules to understand your obligations before you decide to use any of the files in your own projects. Thanks!
Hardware: CERN
Software: MIT
Andreas
February 10, 2021, 8:05pm
2
Within its New Products 2/3/2021 blog post, Adafruit presents the TinyPICO – ESP32 Development Board – V2 .
The smallest, most feature-rich ESP32 dev board is here! TinyPICO has incredible processing power for a board that’s shorter than an alkaline battery.
Thanks to creator-maker Seon Rozenblum , you can tinker with a tiny, mighty, uncompromising board with 4MB extra RAM, on-board RGB LED, and a 700 mAh 3.3V regulator. MicroPython firmware is pre-loaded, and with support for Arduino IDE and Espressif IDF, you get the flexibility to code your way.
Comes with unassembled male headers, stacking headers, JST PH battery connector, and JST MicroBlade battery connector.
The TinyPICO V2 is now a single sided board (crammed it all on the top), is using a new smaller 3d antenna (less susceptible to user damage) and now has a reset button on board.
1 Like
clemens
February 10, 2021, 9:04pm
3
https://www.tinypico.com/
Deep sleep has been optimised for all development platforms, and though we have seen it go as low as 10 uA, our official current rating in deep sleep is 20 uA.
Das hört sich ja nicht schlecht an, kommt ja an den WiPy ran Low power ESP32: Software tweaking (less hardware) - #4
