Pi Pico Explorer Base

Transform your Raspberry Pi Pico into an electronic adventure playground packed with physical computing goodies including an LCD screen, motor drivers, a mini breadboard, and much more!

Pico Explorer lets you play with circuits, build science experiments, prototype tiny robots and inventions and, most importantly, Figure Out How It All Works.

We've incorporated tinkering essentials like a mini breadboard, motor drivers, ADC inputs, a built-in speaker, general-purpose inputs/outputs, switches, and two Breakout Garden slots so you can add on a couple of our wide range of Pimoroni breakouts.

We've also managed to fit in a vibrant 240x240 IPS LCD screen with four tactile buttons so you can easily monitor and control what your project is doing. It's all wrapped up in a nice, sturdy baseboard with a pleasingly compact footprint which won't involve nearly as many trailing wires as if you were experimenting with a traditional breadboard setup. Boo wires, yay Pico Explorer!

Our comprehensive MicroPython and C++ libraries will let you control every aspect of the board like a digital maestro. It's great for beginners, advanced users, and people who awkwardly sit somewhere in the middle and cannot be placed into a simple demographic bucket - we know who you are.

We've really crammed all the functionality we could into this board - quite a few of us were lucky enough to have all-in-one electronic circuit kits when we were small and so we jumped at the chance to put together a bang-up-to-date version.

A Raspberry Pi Pico is not included - click here if you'd like to buy one!

Your Pico will need to have male headers soldered to it (with the pins pointing downwards) to attach to our add-on boards.

Features

• Pico Explorer Base
• Piezo speaker
• 1.54" IPS LCD screen (240 x 240)
• Four user-controllable switches
• Two Half-Bridge motor drivers (with over-current indicator LED)
• Easy access GPIO and ADC pin Headers
• Two Breakout Garden I2C sockets
• Mini breadboard
• Rubber feet
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico.
• No soldering required (as long as your Pico has header pins attached).
• Dimensions: approx. 117mm x 63mm x 20mm (L x W x H, assembled)
• C/C++ and MicroPython libraries

Getting started

The landing area on Pico Explorer Base will show you which way round to plug in your Pico - just match up the USB port with the markings on the board.

The easiest way to get started with our Pico add-ons is by downloading and copying the Pimoroni custom MicroPython firmware to your Pico. Click here for the beginner-friendly tutorial!

Pinout