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CYD and RPi Pico 2??? Greetings again fellow Sentient Lifeforms. Things here at landing pad 2997 on Terra haven't calmed down at all since last month, instead they have gotten worse. Shipping delays and project timeline slippage seem to keep matters in a constant state of flux. Anyway, let’s talk about the news in the world of Microcontrollers. RPi Pico 2 First up is the news that just dropped on August 8 that the folks at Raspberry Pi Foundation have not only created a new Microcontroller named RP2350 and that will be the base chip on the new RPi Pico 2 that will retail for $5.00 USD and available from a few select retailers (see https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/). The downside for now is that the RPi Pico 2 currently doesn’t have Wireless or Bluetooth. That is coming probably before the end of the year. No price has been released for the wireless model at this point, but the speculation around the Internet is that it will probably be around $10 USD. Add to that the board is the same size as the RPi Pico, it’s pretty exciting stuff!
The good news is that the new chip is more powerful than the RP2040 (which was a pretty powerful device) and will bring some awesome specs. I’ll try to distill the specs down for you. The Pico 2 has roughly double the RAM of its predecessor, and double the flash storage too. Flash storage is still kept separate from the SoC, but there is 8KB of on chip storage, reserved for the new Arm TrustZone feature. The stock CPU speed sees a 17 MHz boost over the original Pico, but you can overclock the Pico’s CPU with just two lines of MicroPython. The real performance boost is in how the Arm Cortex M33 performs versus the older Cortex M0+ and that still remains to be seen. In addition to all of that, a number of vendors have announced that they have specialty boards based on the RP2350, including Sparkfun, Seeed Studios, Pimoroni, Invector Labs, Cytron, Adafruit, and many others.
We’ll look at the RPi Pico 2 down the road. You can find the Micropython firmware at https://micropython.org/download/RPI_PICO2/ and CircuitPython at https://circuitpython.org/downloads. CYD or ESP32-2432S028R If you haven’t been watching the news for new Microcontroller boards and devices pretty closely, you might not know about the CYD or ESP32-2432S028R. What is it, why am I discussing it here, and what the heck does ‘CYD’ mean? Just to get this out of the way, CYD stands for ‘Cheap Yellow Display’ (The board is yellow in the original device but some of the third party versions are more orange than yellow). Basically, (and you should be able to figure this part out from the part number) it’s an ESP32 WROOM 32 chip, along with a 2.8-inch LCD TFT touchscreen, all on a single board, and with LOTS of goodies attached like a microSD card interface, an RGB LED, a photoresistor light sensor, and some GPIO exposed pins available to interface many sensors.
I’d love to show you some pictures, but due to shipment delays, I was unable to provide any pictures from my testing unit. So instead of “borrowing” pictures from someone’s website, I’ll suggest you take a look at the Random Nerds website at https://randomnerdtutorials.com/cheap-yellow-display-esp32-2432s028r/. They have a really good tutorial on how to get going with Arduino code, and some REALLY good pictures, to get you drooling. If you are like me, you can immediately start to see some interesting and fun projects using this device. (My adult son wants us to use the test device to make a “pip-boy” wearable wrist unit similar to the one they use in the Fallout series of games and in the TV Series of the same name – https://gear.bethesda.net/products/fallout-series-pip-boy-die-cast-replica. If you didn’t get to watch it when Season 01 was released, you really need to see it! Season 02 is currently in production. I TRULY believe that he’s more excited about this device that I am, if that’s even possible. Not only can you use Arduino to program the CYD device, it looks like you should be able to use the generic ESP-32 Micropython firmware and add a couple of modules to support the display and touchscreen interfaces.
As I have (constantly complained) not received the board yet (and today is the deadline for this article), I haven’t been able to actually power up the board and try anything at all to this point. I am planning on creating a series of future articles that will detail using the CYD in Arduino AND Micropython. Just to attempt to justify this whole thing, there is even a Driver that should allow you to design GUI interfaces (seen in many Internet images of the CYD) that includes buttons, sliders, arcs, and other “widgets” – that I will try to test and provide future reports on as well. In doing my ‘early research’, as I usually do before I get a new device, I ran across a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AVyvwv0agk) by Brian Lough who has done a serious amount of work on using the CYD. He has also created a GitHub repository to hold most of the things that he talks about, as well as a Discord channel dedicated to the CYD.
The bottom line is this device seems to be a great addition to your Microcontroller parts box, and at the very least shows a tremendous amount of potential for things to come in the world of Micropython and Microcontrollers. As I was wandering around the Internet looking for this, I noticed a number of larger displays, some with touchscreen and some without, but none (so far) with dedicated Microcontrollers onboard. As to the “Cheap” portion of the Cheap Yellow Display, when I went to the Internet looking for the ESP32-2432S028R and variants, I found that, depending on where you want to buy from and how fast you want it, you can find many versions of the board for less than $20 USD. For a device that includes a 240 x 320 px display WITH Touchscreen, MicroSD card reader AND an ESP32 controller with Wireless and Bluetooth, I would say that getting one is pretty much a no brainer!
If you are considering buying the CYD board, the folks at MakerAdvisor have created a https://makeradvisor.com/tools/cyd-cheap-yellow-display-esp32-2432s028r/; it shows a number of boards, availability, and price, from some vendors (mostly Amazon and Aliexpress) – to get you started on your purchase. Next time (I can’t promise that it will be next month, since I’m STILL waiting on my test board to come in), I’ll start the series with getting the board up on Arduino IDE (yes, Arduino!). Until next time, as always; stay safe, healthy, positive and creative!