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We’re?big fans of electronic paper?at Pirate HQ – it makes for a lovely, crisp, high contrast display that’s readable even in bright sunlight and it doesn’t squirt unnecessary blue light into your environs like LCDs do. It’s also ultra low power (EPD displays only consume power while they’re refreshing), and the images on the display stick around for a really long time whilst the display is unpowered.

Using a RP2040 chip means we can drive the hardware in fun, experimental, low level ways. We’ve written custom drivers for the EPD display that prioritise low power consumption whilst enabling lightning fast refresh rates.

Features

• 2.9″ black and white E Ink? display (296 x 128 pixels)
  • Ultra wide viewing angles
  • Ultra low power consumption
  • Dot pitch – 0.227 x 0.226 mm
• Powered by RP2040 (Dual Arm Cortex M0+ running at up to 133Mhz with 264kB of SRAM)
• 2MB of QSPI flash supporting XiP
• Five front user buttons
• Reset and boot buttons (the boot button can also be used as a user button)
• White LED
• USB-C connector for power and programming
• JST-PH connector for attaching a battery (input range 2.7V – 6V)
• High-precision voltage reference for battery level monitoring
• Qw/ST (Qwiic/STEMMA QT) connector
• Fully-assembled (no soldering required)
• Schematic
• Mechanical?drawing
• C++/MicroPython libraries

• Bosch BME280 temperature, pressure, humidity sensor (datasheet)
• I2C interface, with address select via cuttable ADDR trace (0x76 or 0x77)
• Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector
• 3.3V or 5V compatible
• Reverse polarity protection (on Breakout Garden connector)
• Raspberry Pi-compatible pinout (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
• Compatible with Arduino
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi (Python library)
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico (C++/MicroPython libraries)
• Schematic

Kit includes

• BME280 breakout
• 1×5 male header
• 1×5 female right angle header

We’ve designed this breakout board so that you can solder on the piece of right angle female header and pop it straight onto the bottom left 5 pins on your Raspberry Pi’s GPIO header (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9). The right angle header also has the advantage of positioning the breakout away from the Pi’s CPU so as to minimise radiated heat.

Software

We’ve put together a?Python library?for using the BME280 sensor with a Raspberry Pi, with handy functions to read all of the values, and?a few nice little examples.

You can also use this breakout with Raspberry Pi Pico and other RP2040 boards, using?C++ or Pirate brand MicroPython?or?CircuitPython.

Notes

• In our testing, we’ve found that the sensor requires some burn-in time (at least 20 minutes) and that readings may take a couple of minutes to stabilise after beginning measurements
• The trace on the back (marked ADDR) can be cut to change the I2C address from the default of 0x76 to 0x77, meaning that you can use up to two sensors on the same Raspberry Pi or Arduino.
• The BME280, BME680, and BMP280 breakouts all share the same I2C addresses, so if you’re using two together then you’ll need to change the I2C address on one of them using the cuttable trace.
• Dimensions: 19x19x4.7mm (LxWxH, including connectors)

• Bosch BME688 4-in-1 environmental sensor with Artificial Intelligence (datasheet)
• I2C interface, with address select via ADDR cuttable trace (0x76 or 0x77)
• Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector
• 3.3V or 5V compatible
• Reverse polarity protection (on Breakout Garden connector)
• Raspberry Pi-compatible pinout (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
• Compatible with Arduino
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi (Python library)
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico (C++/MicroPython libraries)
• C library provided by Bosch
• BME688 software
• Schematic

Kit includes

• BME688 breakout
• 1×5 male header
• 1×5 female right angle header

We’ve designed this breakout board so that you can solder on the piece of right angle female header and pop it straight onto the bottom left 5 pins on your Raspberry Pi’s GPIO header (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9). The right angle header also has the advantage of positioning the breakout away from the Pi’s CPU so as to minimise radiated heat.

Software

Bosch provide a C library,for this sensor, but we’ve also updated our BME680?Python library?(with a quick and painless one-line-installer) to work with the BME688, making it straightforward to combine it with our other boards (why not use a Blinkt! or Unicorn pHAT to visualise air quality in real time?)

You can also use this breakout with Raspberry Pi Pico and other?RP2040 boards,?using?C++?or Pirate brand MicroPython.

Notes

• In our testing, we’ve found that the sensor requires some burn-in time (at least 20 minutes) and that readings may take a couple of minutes to stabilise after beginning measurements
• The trace on the back of the board marked ADDR can be cut to change the I2C address from the default of 0x76 to 0x77, meaning that you can use up to two sensors on the same Raspberry Pi or Arduino
• The BME280, BME680, BMP280 and BME688 breakouts all share the same I2C addresses, so if you’re using two together then you’ll need to change the I2C address on one of them using the solder bridge or cuttable traces.
• Dimensions: approx 19mm x 19mm x 5mm (L x W x H, including connector)

• Getting Started with Interstate 75
• Download Pirate brand MicroPython
• Interstate 75 function reference
• C++ examples
• MicroPython examples

You can also use?CircuitPython?on your Interstate 75! Because CircuitPython drivers are designed to work on a bunch of different microcontrollers you won’t get the fancy RP2040-architecture specific tweaks that you’ll find in our library, but you will get access to Adafruit’s mighty DisplayIO library which makes it super easy to display all sorts of different kinds of text, draw shapes and display images.

• Getting Started with Interstate 75
• Download CircuitPython for Interstate 75
• Getting Started with CircuitPython
• RGB LED Matrices with CircuitPython

Please note that some less-common varieties of 64×64 panels, like ones that use the FM6126A chip, are not currently supported in CircuitPython.

Connecting Breakouts

If your breakout has a QW/ST connector on board, you can plug it straight in with a?JST-SH to JST-SH cable, or you can easily connect any of our I2C Breakout Garden breakouts with a?JST-SH to JST-SH cable?coupled with a?Qw/ST to Breakout Garden adaptor.

You can find a list of which breakouts are currently compatible with our C++/MicroPython build in the most recent?release notes.

We’ve also broken out a bunch of useful I2C pins, analog pins and debug pins along the side of the board so you can solder things like breakouts or analog potentiometers directly to them.

About RP2040

Raspberry Pi’s RP2040 microcontroller is a dual core ARM Cortex M0+ running at up to 133Mhz. It bundles in 264kB of SRAM, 30 multifunction GPIO pins (including a four channel 12-bit ADC), a heap of standard peripherals (I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, clocks, etc), and USB support.

One very exciting feature of RP2040 is the programmable IOs which allow you to execute custom programs that can manipulate GPIO pins and transfer data between peripherals – they can offload tasks that require high data transfer rates or precise timing that traditionally would have required a lot of heavy lifting from the CPU.