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The Metro RP2040 from Adafruit fits a Raspberry Pi RP2040 and additional components into an Arduino UNO form factor.

Stack Thomas August 09, 2023

The Metro RP2040 adopts Arduino's most recognizable design when it launches with support for the Arduino IDE, MicroPython, and CircuitPython.

The Metro RP2040 from Adafruit fits a Raspberry Pi RP2040 and additional components into an Arduino UNO form factor.

The Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ CPU is the latest addition to Adafruit's Metro series of Arduino UNO form format microcontroller development boards. Its name, predictably, is the Adafruit Metro RP2040.

Adafruit boasts of its newest Metro design: "This is the RP2040 Metro Line, making all station stops at "Dual Cortex M0+ mountain," "264k RAM round-about," and "16 Megabytes of Flash town." This development board is "pile[d] high with hardware that complements the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip to make it an excellent development board for projects that want Arduino-shape-compatibility or just need the extra space and debugging ports," according to the manufacturer.

Adafruit Metro RP2040

The Metro RP2040 is intended to be pin and footprint compatible with the Arduino UNO series of microcontroller development boards, much as other Metro line products. But it's not a copy; in addition to the new microcontroller at its core, the board has a STEMMA QT port for expansion to external boards, a dedicated debug port, a microSD slot for storage, and an on-board RGB LED in addition to the standard Pin 13 LED.

Adafruit Metro RP2040

The Metro RP2040, like the other products in the Metro line, is made to be pin and footprint compatible with the Arduino UNO family of microcontroller development boards. But it's not a copy: in addition to the new microcontroller at the center, the board has a USB Type-C connector rather than a full-size USB port, a microSD slot for storage, a dedicated debug port, a STEMMA QT port for expansion to external boards, and an on-board RGB LED in place of the customary Pin 13 LED.

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Adafruit does provide a few tips for individuals wishing to purchase a board, though. The first is that while SD Input/Output (SDIO) operation is supported by the hardware in the microSD slot, there is no matching software support in Arduino, MicroPython, or CircuitPython. The second difference is in the pinout compared to a genuine Arduino UNO: Pins A4 and A5, which are Arduino UNO's fifth and sixth analog inputs, are now on the Metro RP2040 digital inputs.

Additionally, there is a receive-transmit switch that is absent from the original Arduino UNO. "We added this because conventional Arduino boards start counting the GPIO for the digital pins with 0-7 and then 8-13," the author explains. The hardware UART Serial1 is usually connected to the D0/D1 pins, where D0 is Rx and D1 is Tx, according to the manufacturer.

However, the UART pins on the RP2040 are reversed: D0 is Tx and D1 is Rx. Therefore, a DPDT [Double-Pole Double-Throw] switch: flip one way to have the GPIO run in order of 0–7, flip the other way to have the right logical positions of the hardware UART, but the pin order is now 1, 0, 2, 3–7.

The Metro RP2040 is offered for $14.95 before bulk discounts on the Adafruit Store, where interested parties may sign up to be alerted when it goes on sale. The board design has been finished, but the hardware has not yet been released.

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