Arduino for Beginners: July 2023

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Cytron Robo Pico review

Introduction

Cytron send me a new product, Robo Pico (link) together with Pico W (link2) for review and here are the essential summary.

Unboxing & PCB layout

the box comes with Robo Pico purple board
4 x grove cables to 4 female dupont
cute mini screw driver
nice purple soldermask PCB

This Printed Circuit Board (PCB) is well designed with CLEAN and CLEAR labels on front and back of PCB. All pins are CLEARLY labeled without the need to refer to the documentations. I really ike the flexible power options to power up this board from USB, DC in and also Li-Ion battery + charging options al bult-in.

Flexible power options + battery charging

USB Micro from the Pico/Pico W
DC-in ( 3.6 - 6V ) ( green screw terminals )
single cell LiPO/Li-Ion battery ( ph2.0 connector )
Built-in 1-cell charger to charge the battery when USB is plugged in.
On / Off switch

Available Ports

2 x 20 ways female headers for Pi Pico/W
1 x reset button ( *** )
2 x channel DC motor driver
4 x servo motor ports
4 x motor quick test buttons
2 x user buttons
7 x grove ports
1 x maker port ( Qwiic / STEMMA QT / JST SH-4 )
13 x LED indicators on all the non-power grove ports
2 x RGB LED WS2812B/NeoPixels
1 x piezo buzzer
on/off switch

Reviews & Sample Project

Being an Arduino site, I will do this review using Arduino framework with the following using the Raspberry Pi Pico / RP2040 by Earle Philhower ( arduino-pico ) and the documentation are located here https://arduino-pico.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Since this comes with a Pico W with headers (link2), I decided to do a web controlled Servo + RGB LED using a slider.

I have hookup 2 x servo motors to GPIO14 and GPIO15 and a 18650 battery with a PH2.0 connector to the battery port.

This is the first time I m using the Pico W but I have been using Pico in my past project before. The amazing thing is ALL the past Wifi examples ( mostly from ESP32 ) JUST WORKS without any modifications to the source codes. If you are unsure which Pico to get, get the Pico W for future expandions.

The major differences between Pico and Pico W is that the Pico built-in LED is on GPIO25 where the Pico W have the GPIO25 driving the Wireless module.

I am utilizing the 8 blue LED ( above the 5 grove connectors ) as a left or right car signal indicator animations when the servo is turning to the left or right.

When the servo is turning left, the rows of blue LED will animate a left signal turn and then the servo is turning right, it will do the right signal animation.

The video for this review is located at www.tiktok.com/@stanleyseow/

Here is the source code at https://pastebin.com/ZARAa14L