Pimoroni makes a number of exciting screens, boards and kits based on the Raspberry Pi’s Pico controller or the RP2040 chip that powers it. The Sheffield-based electronics company’s next big project: a gaming console with a Chromecast stick-like form factor, two different RP2040 chips, and the ability to directly launch the Python REPL command line.
Pimoroni founders Jon Williamson and Paul Beech have revealed the following products: They said it will likely be named DV or “digital video” stick. Tom’s Hardware Pi Cast (opens in new tab)a weekly show about all things Raspberry Pi.
“This stick product, this HDMI, is the most fun thing that’s going on right now,” Williamson said.
The stick incorporates an HDMI port that can be used to connect directly to a TV or monitor, and a USB port that can be used to connect wired peripherals. can.
When used as a game console, the DV stick can play the same games that run on Pimoroni’s PicoSystem handhelds. Launching in 2021, PicoSystem already has some community-made games, but it also provides tools that let you develop your own games in C++, MicroPython, or CircuitPython. PicoSystem uses a single RP2040 to process and output to a 240 x 240, 1.54 inch display. Pimoroni hasn’t specified a maximum resolution for his DV stick, but since it’s designed to connect to a TV, expect it to hit at least 1080p.
Pimoroni is also working on a way to run the MicroPython REPL directly on a DV stick. This allows you to boot to the prompt (without using an OS other than the device’s firmware) and start writing and executing code directly at the prompt. This type of experience is reminiscent of his UI on his 1980s computers, such as the ZX Spectrum, Atari 400, Commodore 64 and many others. On these computers, the system booted to a prompt where you could enter a BASIC program.
The company also says it can use a DV stick to display information. For example, if you want to display your schedule on a screen for everyone to see, you can write a simple program using the company’s Picographics Micropython library to connect your device to the display.
The DV stick’s dual RP2040 chips allow one CPU to run the software processing and another to drive the display. Each chip has its own PS RAM chip, so it has more memory than the 264K that comes standard on the RP2040 chip / Raspberry Pi Picos.
“Each chip has a PS RAM chip for frame buffers and swaps with VSync,” Williamson said. “So there’s an analog multiplexer that basically swaps the two chips, the application processor writes to the framebuffer on one RAM chip, and when VSync happens on the display, it passes that RAM chip to the display processor. Send it back to the application processor so that the display can be printed to the screen.”
Using just one RP2040 processor to drive an HDMI display leaves a significant amount of application performance unattainable, Williams said.
There is no official release date or price for the DV stick, and it may go by a different name at launch. The product is working on a breadboard, but there are no photos of it in the article because there is no working prototype yet. I’m here. Whenever it comes out, they hope manufacturers will find new and exciting ways to use it.
“It’s kind of quirky, but we like the concept so much that we didn’t really care what it could do,” Williams said. I just threw it in and thought, let’s see what happens.”
