Adafruit KB2040
by Adafruit
A wild Kee Boar appears! It’s a shiny KB2040! An Arduino Pro Micro-shaped board for Keebs with RP2040. (#keeblife 4 evah) A lot of folks like using Adafruit parts for their Keeb builds – but with the ItsyBitsy not being pin-compatible with the Pro Micro pinout, it really wasn’t very easy without some sort of adapter plate.
Now we’re seeing lots of people use CircuitPython for keebs, which is awesome! So why not try our hands at spinning up a pro-micro-compatible RP2040 board? The RP2040 is plenty powerful, low-cost, and makes for an excellent keeb driver chip.
We mixed together what we liked most about the SparkFun Pro Micro RP2040 (Qwiic / STEMMA QT I2C port on the end, so good!) and Elite-C (castellated pads & pins for D+ and D-) and our existing RP2040 boards (boot button can be used for user, 8MB QSPI flash, onboard NeoPixel, jumper for skipping the diode/fuse for high power RGB LEDs or USB hosting). We even got it to all fit on a 2-layer PCB with 7/7 routing – just needed to make the smallest caps and resistors 0402.
With 20 GPIO available (18 on castellated pins, 2 on STEMMA QT port) you can easily make up to 100-keys matrices, or common 65% 5x15 layouts. Use a plug-and-play QT cable to connect to the last two pins without having to do any desoldering/rework.
Technical details
- Same size and form-factor as a Pro Micro breakout and nearly-identical pinout (this board has fewer analog pins, for example)
- Measures 1.3” x 0.7” without headers soldered in
- RP2040 32-bit Cortex M0+ dual core running at ~125 MHz @ 3.3 V logic and power. 264 KB RAM, No EEPROM. 12 MHz crystal for perfect timing.
- 8 MB SPI FLASH chip for storing files and CircuitPython/MicroPython code storage.
- 20 GPIO pins with following capabilities:
- 18 GPIO on castellated/pin breakout pads. 2 GPIO on QT port that can be easily accessed for 5x15 keyboard layouts.
- 4 12 bit ADCs
- 2 I2C, 2 SPI and 2 UART peripherals, we label one of for the ‘main’ interface in standard Pro Micro locations
- 16 PWM outputs - for servos, LEDs, etc
- The 10 digital non-ADC GPIO are consecutive for maximum PIO compatibility
- RGB NeoPixel for colorful status indiction
- Classic green power LED
- Both Reset button and Bootloader select button for quick restarts. Bootloader button is also available as a generic GPIO input button.
- STEMMA QT connector on the end is compatible with the SparkFun Qwiic I2C connector, and can be used to plug and play I2C devices, or just as 2 extra GPIO pins.
- 3.3 V regulator with 500 mA peak current output
- RAW output, for powering NeoPixels or other 5 V devices. Jumper on bottom lets you skip over the 500 mA fuse, for up to 2 A from USB ports.
- USB-C connector lets you access built-in ROM USB bootloader and serial port debugging
- Extra D- and D+ breakouts for alternative USB connection options.
Purchase
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CircuitPython 9.0.4
This is the latest stable release of CircuitPython that will work with the Adafruit KB2040.
Use this release if you are new to CircuitPython.
Built-in modules available: _asyncio, _bleio, _pixelmap, adafruit_bus_device, adafruit_pixelbuf, aesio, alarm, analogbufio, analogio, array, atexit, audiobusio, audiocore, audiomixer, audiomp3, audiopwmio, binascii, bitbangio, bitmaptools, bitops, board, builtins, builtins.pow3, busdisplay, busio, busio.SPI, busio.UART, codeop, collections, countio, digitalio, displayio, epaperdisplay, errno, floppyio, fontio, fourwire, framebufferio, getpass, gifio, hashlib, i2cdisplaybus, i2ctarget, imagecapture, io, jpegio, json, keypad, keypad.KeyMatrix, keypad.Keys, keypad.ShiftRegisterKeys, locale, math, memorymap, microcontroller, msgpack, neopixel_write, nvm, onewireio, os, os.getenv, paralleldisplaybus, pulseio, pwmio, qrio, rainbowio, random, re, rgbmatrix, rotaryio, rp2pio, rtc, sdcardio, select, sharpdisplay, storage, struct, supervisor, synthio, sys, terminalio, time, touchio, traceback, ulab, usb, usb_cdc, usb_hid, usb_host, usb_midi, usb_video, vectorio, warnings, watchdog, zlib
CircuitPython 9.1.0-beta.1
This is the latest development release of CircuitPython that will work with the Adafruit KB2040.
Alpha development releases are early releases. They are unfinished, are likely to have bugs, and the features they provide may change. Beta releases may have some bugs and unfinished features, but should be suitable for many uses. A Release Candidate (rc) release is considered done and will become the next stable release, assuming no further issues are found.
Please try alpha, beta, and rc releases if you are able. Your testing is invaluable: it helps us uncover and find issues quickly.
Release Notes for 9.1.0-beta.1
Built-in modules available: _asyncio, _bleio, _pixelmap, adafruit_bus_device, adafruit_pixelbuf, aesio, alarm, analogbufio, analogio, array, atexit, audiobusio, audiocore, audiomixer, audiomp3, audiopwmio, binascii, bitbangio, bitmapfilter, bitmaptools, bitops, board, builtins, builtins.pow3, busdisplay, busio, busio.SPI, busio.UART, codeop, collections, countio, digitalio, displayio, epaperdisplay, errno, floppyio, fontio, fourwire, framebufferio, getpass, gifio, hashlib, i2cdisplaybus, i2ctarget, imagecapture, io, jpegio, json, keypad, keypad.KeyMatrix, keypad.Keys, keypad.ShiftRegisterKeys, keypad_demux, keypad_demux.DemuxKeyMatrix, locale, math, memorymap, microcontroller, msgpack, neopixel_write, nvm, onewireio, os, os.getenv, paralleldisplaybus, pulseio, pwmio, qrio, rainbowio, random, re, rgbmatrix, rotaryio, rp2pio, rtc, sdcardio, select, sharpdisplay, storage, struct, supervisor, synthio, sys, terminalio, time, touchio, traceback, ulab, usb, usb_cdc, usb_hid, usb_host, usb_midi, usb_video, vectorio, warnings, watchdog, zlib
Absolute Newest
Every time we commit new code to CircuitPython we automatically build binaries for each board and language. The binaries are stored on Amazon S3, organized by board, and then by language. These releases are even newer than the development release listed above. Try them if you want the absolute latest and are feeling daring or want to see if a problem has been fixed.
Previous Versions of CircuitPython
All previous releases of CircuitPython are available for download from Amazon S3 through the button below. For very old releases, look in the OLD/ folder for each board. Release notes for each release are available at GitHub button below.
Older releases are useful for testing if you something appears to be broken in a newer release but used to work, or if you have older code that depends on features only available in an older release. Otherwise we recommend using the latest stable release.