CanSat base board for Pico

CANSAT development board - Raspberry-Pi Pico

This development board is designed to be used with the Raspberry-Pi Pico, a Lipo battery charger, a RF communication module and a prototyping aread. The board do also have a FPC expansion connector (40 lines) to connect an external board as well as a Qwiic/StemmaQt connector for rapid sensor connexion.

This board fits 3 holes designed to create a cylindrical structure. Just add a board at the other site (eg: this prototyping child board) and bolt them together.

We do have a full kit documentation (English, Wiki). See also our presentation article (French) on the MCHobby's blog.

With its 63.9mm diameter (CANSAT compatible), this development board would offer the following features:

• Very low profile
• Labels for eack of the Pico Pins
• Small prototyping area of 97 pads (to solder components)
• A connexion point to connect the Lipo Charger (eg: PowerBoost 500, Compatible with PowerBoost 1000)
• An UEXT connection point:
  
  • 3.3V, GND
  • bus I2C : SDA=GP8, SCL=GP9 - I2C(0)
  • bus SPI : Y5, Y6, Y7, ssel = GP10 - SPI(0)
  • UART : TX=GP1, RX=GP1 - UART(0)
• RESET signal breakout near of the board boundaries
• POWER_OFF signal breakout near of the board boundaries (to power-off the project)
• FPC Expansion connector used to report the Pico lines + 8 user defined to the expansion board.
• Sparkfun Qwiic / Adafruit StemmaQT compatible connector:
  
  • Would allow the quick and easy connexion of board and sensors expositing that connexion.
  • Defaut to 3.3V (can be reconfigured to 5V)
  • I2C Bus : SDA=GP8, SCL=GP9 - I2C(0)
• Board schematic (pdf)

Qwiic/StemmaQT

The JST-SH 4 pins connector is used by Adafruit Industries and SparkFun electronics for quick connexion of breakout and sensors. This connection will brings an I2C bus between the microcontroler and the target board. Qwiic and StemmaQt are very frequent nowadays so we decided to fit them on the development board.
See our document on various DIY connectors for more informations

UEXT

The UEXT pads can be used as a prototyping connection point or with an IDC 2x10 housing, UEXT also allows to plug rapid prototyping modules (see the UEXT product line) or to create your own expansion board.
We did also reused that connector to connect the RFM69 packet radio module.

Want to know more about UEXT? please check the the "What's about EXT?" section of the MOD-ENV environmental sensor . Many UEXT modules are compatible with MicroPython (drivers developped by MCHobby).

Content

For each ordern you will receive the board with the Qwiic/StemmaQt, the reset button and the FPC connectors ALREADY SOLDERED ON THE BOARD.

This product requires a Raspberry-Pi Pico to make it working.