The RP2040, the beating heart of the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W, has become a very popular target for creating development boards, many of which we’ve seen on Tindie shelves or written about here. The pHAT 2040 takes, in essence, the Pico experience, and turns it into a Raspberry Pi Zero, or other Raspberry Pi pHAT add-on board.
You could work directly with the pHAT 2040 programming via the USB-C connector but of course one of the use cases for the pHAT is that you could program the RP2040 directly from a Raspberry Pi without the need for any additional hardware or cables. We’d also imagine that you could potentially replace the role of a Pi Zero and use the pHAT 2040 to drive the rich variety of Pi Zero hats that are available.
We’re pretty sure that the pHAT 2040 is the hardware equivalent to the Pico; there’s no mention in the product listing of the attached flash chip, but a quick search of the IC legend taken from the product photo shows it is a 128Mbit chip so is well up to spec. We like that the pHAT 2040 has both the boot select and the reset buttons on board making flashing, programming and power cycling this board simple and straightforward.
So if you want to create a totally custom Pi Zero hat, or you want to use an existing Pi Hat with the RP2040 — look no further!
