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  • Author Author: bernhardmayer
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 2037 views
  • Likes 5 likes
  • Comments 2 comments
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PicoMKRAdapter - connect Arduino MKR Shields to Raspberry Pi Pico

bernhardmayer

I was very excited when I heard about the new Raspberry Pi Pico (Raspberry Pi Pico )

 

Overview

 

I thought about all the projects I am going to built with it. But I needed to find a good starting point.

There are already a lot of Arduino Shields lying on my desk, some of them official, some of them designed by me and my friends. So I decided to get them running with the Raspberry Pi Pico and see how it is performing. To simplify the test setups I decided to design an adapter and this is it:

 

imageimage

The Raspberry Pi Pico plugs into the one side and the Arduino MKR Shield plugs into the other side. Additionally it has two Qwiic connectors for I2C0 and I2C1 and a third connector for serial.

 

pin usage

 

The following table shows how the Arduino MKR is connected to the Pico. I tried to connect the pins of SPI, I2C and UART to hardware ports.

 

Arduino MKRRaspberry Pi Pico
PinPin NamePin NamePin
1AREFADC_VREF35
2DAC0/A0GP26/ADC031
3A1GP27/ADC132
4A2GP28/ADC234
5A3GP1520
6A4GP2229
7A5GP2127
8A6GP2026
90GP01
101GP12
112GP24
123GP35
134GP1014
145GP57
156GP1419
167GP1115
178/MOSIGP710
189/SCKGP69
1910/MISOGP46
2011/SDAGP12/I2C0_SDA16
2112/SCLGP13/I2C0_SCL17
2213/RXGP9/UART1_RX12
2314/TXGP8/UART1_TX11
24RESETRUN30
25GNDGND3..38
26VCC3V336
27VINVBUS40
285V0VSYS39

 

project data and documentation

 

The whole project and documentation is available on github: https://github.com/generationmake/PicoMKRAdapter/

 

I also uploaded the project to Aisler. PCB and parts may be sourced there: https://aisler.net/p/NLXLWAGV

 

Prototypes

 

By now the prototypes have arrived. The pcbs look like this:

 

image

 

Assembled and with a Raspberry Pi Pico on top it looks like this:

 

image

 

Questions?

 

What do you think about this adapter? Do you have any suggestions to make it better?

  • in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

    Hallo Wolfgang,

     

    thank you. Yes, the square pads are GND. I saw this on the Raspberry Pi Pico and really liked it.

     

    The reset lines seems to work also. I have some shields with a reset button on them. And pushing this button resets the Pico.

     

    At the moment it is only to connect Arduino Shields to the Raspberry Pi Pico.

    I am always afraid of connecting to processor boards together as they might drive against each other and the magic smoke might come out.

     

    Bernhard

  • Love the idea. I am a big fan of adapters like this. Did some shields that work on Uno and Feathers.

     

    An improvement might be to add resistor option to cross RX/TX and make the power rails directional with Schottky diodes and then be able to plug in a Pico and a MKR controller and have a multiprocessor system.

     

    I did not check, but do have RESET and RUN correct directions/polarities to not block the other part?

    Oh, and silkscreen on the pins to label their function would be nice. Are the square pads GND? Nice detail.

     

    Good work,

    - Wolfgang.