Hardware

related repository: Hardware

Hint: there is a lot of useful information (pinouts and labels) on the silkscreen on the reverse of the board and in the Pinout section on the website.

Audio

• speaker / buzzer onboard
  • PWM-driven mono speaker on GPIO3
  • 2W 8Ω speaker attached
  • volume controlled via boot button UI, saved to settings.json in flash
• audio out jack (headphone)
• (in principle the hardware supports I2S)

Battery

• 2 pin JST-ZH 2.0 connector / Picoblade 1.25mm-compatible (the smaller one common with LiPo batteries)
  • NB if you have batteries with Micro-JST / 1.25SH plugs (the larger ones also common on LiPo batteries), there are adapters available so you don't have to solder or otherwise hack your connector cables. These work nicely.

Bluetooth

• Bluetooth 5.0 LE
• available in hardware (ESP32 S3), not implemented

Case

• the four mounting holes on the board are 2mm
• if you design one, please 📢 tell us and share it!

Designs

Bumper case by @andypiper (3dprint.social, Printables)

CPU

• see microprocesor below

Display

• onboard TFT display 320x240 pixels, 16 bits per pixel, via ST7789 driver
• HDMI out (future, via RP2350 adapter)
  • ideally someone will add a pinout / page here showing how to wire this up via a Pico 2 and DVI board 🙂

Expansion port

• 18 (2x9) pins, 2.54mm pitch
• pinout printed on reverse of board and in Pinout section of website

GPIO

• tbd

I2C

• QWIIC 1 - GPIO 5 SDA/6 SCL - not implemented in current firmware 0.0.9
• QWIIC 2 - GPIO 43 SCL/44 SDA - will accept Wii Nunchuk as Kempston Joystick input

Joystick

• firmware has support for a Wii Nunchuk as Kempston Joystick (over QWIIC 2 only)

Keyboard

• standard 40-key ZX Spectrum layout including shifted modifiers
• capacitive touch
• useful keycode reference

LED

• D1
  • status / user controllable LED (active-HIGH) -> accessible via GPIO 1
  • lit red -> battery charging (both battery and USB-C power attached)
• D2
  • lit green -> 3V3 power supply is active
• D3
  • lit green -> 5V power is available from the USB-C port

Memory

• 8MB flash memory
• 8MB PSRAM

Microprocessor

• ESP32 S3 WROOM - datasheet
• dual core, clocked at 240 MHz

Pinout

• see Pinout reference on the esp32rainbow website, and the information printed on the reverse of the board

Power

• all digital I/O is 3V3-tolerant unless stated
• 5V rail is supplied from USB-C
• can also be powered via pads near the battery and expansion connectors
• also see battery above, and LED for power status information
• main documentation

QWIIC

• see I2C above

SD Card

• microSD card storage supported, FAT32 format
• also accessible via website (either File Browser, or directly via the games catalog -> send to SD card)
• main documentation

Wifi

• 2.4 GHz, 802.11 b/g/n onboard
• available in hardware (ESP32 S3), not implemented
  • could be used in future for wireless access to SD card, keyboard input, etc?

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➡️ Hardware troubleshooting on main website

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Reverse of board

There doesn't seem to be a complete image of the reverse of the board anywhere in the repositories right now, so here's one from a photo of a production board. Useful reference.