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Adafruit KB2040 controller

Adafruit announced the preliminary pinouts of its RP2040 based KB2040 controller: the Keeboars.

KBD.news
Published November 6, 2021
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Featuring a Raspberry Pi RP2040 with a dual ARM Cortex-M0+ running at up to 133MHz with 264kB on-chip SRAM and built in USB, the Adafruit KB2040 seems to be a Raspberry Pi Pico alternative in a Pro Micro form factor.

Designers at Adafruit seem to be aware of the importance of Pro Micro compatibility among keyboard enthusiasts.

We’re comparing to the popular pro micro boards that folks use for keebs. so far so good – its a lot to fit into such a small board but we think its all there! – Phillip Torrone.

I was very intrigued how these Keeboars will turn out in terms of final dimensions, pin compatibility and ofc price so I asked Phillip from Adafruit some questions and will hopefully able to update this post with more details who was kind enough to answer in detail:

UPDATE 2021/11/09

So this controller has 18 easily accessible GPIO pins like the original Pro Micro?

Yes there are 18 GPIO pins accessible along the pads, plus another 2 on the JST SH connector – those are intended for I2C access. We also broke out the D+ and D- pins for folks who want to have the USB connector elsewhere.

Also, is the footprint 100% Pro Micro compatible?

Yep! The physical size is the same with the pads in the same location. For pin usage, there are a few differences: the RP2040 does not have as many analog pins, for example, but it can have PWM on any pad. All the peripherals: UART/I2C/SPI and the GPIO numbers, are the same locations.

Note that QMK is not available for RP2040 yet (https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/issues/11649) so we recommend using CircuitPython/KMK or Arduino for now (Here is a guide for simple HID keyboards in CircuitPython and this one covers key matrices and scanning for more advanced builds.)

Do you have a preliminary price estimation?

Will be less than $10.

And an estimated date when these will be available?

About 3 weeks!

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Thanks Phillip! Now I can't wait to try these funky controllers in a build.

Original post:

https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/11/05/pretty-pins-in-pink-2-preliminary-kb2040-pinouts/

By the way, Adafruit is a sponsor of our anniversary giveaway. Check the giveaway page for rules to win $100 in store credit in the Adafruit store.

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Published on Sat 6th Nov 2021. Featured in KBD #51 (source).


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