BLINKENLIGHTS-RP2040 (An updated design using the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller)

1. Change processor to a Raspberry PI RP2040 based on the standard reference design from the Raspberry Pi foundation to give the project more street appeal. (JLPCB have tens of thousands in stock)

2. Change communication and power to use USB (via JST cable)

3. Fix print screen which was numbered in reverse order to a normal binary display. This was not obvious until I came to use it.

4. Ensure all parts on BOM are easily available at LCSC for direct manufacture at JLPCBS.

I have tested the hardware and added a small demonstration program in C and included the compiled UF2 binary file so you can just load from your computer without any programming tools or knowledge. To do this press boot-sel button before you power on and the RP2040 will look like a USB Disk you can just drop the UF2 file onto. Thats it!

Cost of 5 assembled panels at JLPCB was US$80 + postage. On top of this you will need a USB to 4-way JST2.54 cable which are about US$3 each delivered off ali-express ( eg Xh2.54 4 Pin To Usb2.0 USB Cable For Zero Delay Encoder Board Arcade Game Joystick Controller Shield Wire Harness Hitbox Pc Ps3 - AliExpress 18) Normal USB sockets have mounting holes that you can see through the board there maybe ones that dont, but I could not find them at LSCS.

I have supplied demo C code which provides the basic blinky-lights in under 100 lines of code. As I only started RP2040 development a few hours ago, and me and chatGPT have yet to be able to get the Serial Comms over the USB working. I am in no rush to do this as I have a day job and this project was built for somebody else, also I have my original PIC based lights, but if I can get to this stage after a few hours I'm sure smarter people can develop it further.

Note the original blinkenlights got to 3rd place on the hacker news front page, so I am guessing there was some interest out there, but most people just wanted something that is ready assembled and programmed they could buy, I cant do that but this should help a little.

Design is public domain so do what you want with it. I will do a full write up sometime at my website rodyne.com (and if you want a PIC16F version it is also there too).

Enjoy!

Boz.