Pico Deck
A small flash drive, but with buttons (for shortcuts) and LEDs instead of storage!! With a custom RP2040 devboard!
July 11th: Completed Schematic + PCB design!
Started out by researching some RP2040 devboard guides. Like this one!
I decided to give EasyEDA Pro for the first time for this project! Usually, I use KiCAD!
Then I looked at different schematics and completed the RP2040 devboard part of my schematic! Instead of a USB-C or microUSB female port, I instead used a USB-A port with the RP2040, because that fulfils my purpose! All of the components I used are SMD! For the flash, I used 128Mbit W25Q128JWPIQ. And the 3.3V voltage regulator I used was the AMS1117-3.3!
After the devboard was completed, I added 4 tactile switches. They will serve as the keys! And for the lights, at first I was going for normal LEDs, but then realised I could use something like the WS2812B for cool animations or effects, so I went with those! WS2812B operate at 3.7-5.3V, so I powered them directly from the USBVBUS instead of the RP2040. I added _8 WS2812B, and they can all be controlled by a single RP2040 GPIO pin! Their main advantage is that they can be chained, and then the Neopixel library can be used for easy programming!
After that, I went to the PCB tab, updated all the components, and placed them in a nice layout. I tried to place all the components close that I had read online had to be placed close to a part. I placed all the resistors, capacitors, and every component except for the WS2812B and buttons on the bottom layer, and the buttons and the WS2812B on the top layer! Then I made a nicely styled outline for the board! Now the only thing left is routing (auto-routing isn't working, I might have to rearrange some components)!
Schematic:
PCB:
Total time spent: 7 hours