Maker is building a Raspberry Pi ‘ProPico’ with upgraded features

Maker and developer Dmytro has created a seriously cool upgraded design for the Raspberry Pi Pico. He’s taken one of our favorite microcontrollers and modified it to suit his own preferences, as well as resolving a few common grievances shared by the Pi community. Dmytro has dubbed the new creation the ProPico, as it provides more tools than the regular Pico, placing it in a more professional category.

According to Dmytro, it was important for the new ProPico board to remain true to its original form factor and support the same software. Each deviation required careful planning to ensure not just consistent compatibility, but also affordability. To make things easier, Dmytro put together a list of areas that the new design would address with an improvement.

You can find the full list of issues as well as a breakdown explaining them in better detail over at Dmytro’s website. It includes things like like limited flash size, the lack of a dedicated reset button and a loud DC-DC converter PSU. There are also a number of people in the maker community who were less than enthusiastic at the inclusion of microUSB, and Dmytro is one of them.

Dmytro recommends replacing the DC-DC converter with either a TLV761 or TLV1117 linear voltage regulator. The new design also includes an onboard ADC reference as well as USB Type-C instead of micro USB. A reset button is included and placed away from the boot / select button so they are easier to press without accidentally hitting the other button by mistake.

It’s worth noting that this is still a work in progress and the final design has yet to be shared. If you’re interested in this Raspberry Pi project and want to follow Dmytro for updates, the best place to do so is at the official ProPico project page shared to GitHub. You can also find more information about the ProPico’s current design on Dmytro’s website.