I got some of these seriously cheap from Ali Express, They are
essentially a PI PICO on a much smaller board with fewer accessible pins.

Has anyone used one?



--
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to
rule.
– H. L. Mencken, American journalist, 1880-1956

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I got some of these seriously cheap from Ali Express, They are
essentially a PI PICO on a much smaller board with fewer  accessible pins.

Has anyone used one?

When the PICO2 came out, I bought a couple of PiMoroni 2350 boards, both smaller than official PICO2 boards, one with USB-C and fewer pins, one
with full set of pins but no USB port on-board ... life intervened so
done nowt with them ... I remember hearing there's something b0rked with
I/O on the 2350s in general, not sure if it's just edge cases or
generally fucked?

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/raspberry-pi-rp2350-e9-erratum-redefined-as-input-mode-leakage-current/

basically if you want a pulldown on an input pin there's chunky leakage current. That can also affect external circuitry that isn't expecting it,
eg if you have a resistive divider as the leakage could drag the voltage
down. You can end up with I/Os getting stuck halfway and effectively
latching old values.

That could cause some issues if you're doing a drop in replacement for a
RP2040 but if you use stronger external pullup/pulldowns it should avoid the issue.

It looks like they haven't done a respin to fix it thus far.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I got some of these seriously cheap from Ali Express, They are
essentially a PI PICO on a much smaller board with fewer  accessible pins.

Has anyone used one?

When the PICO2 came out, I bought a couple of PiMoroni 2350 boards, both smaller than official PICO2 boards, one with USB-C and fewer pins, one
with full set of pins but no USB port on-board ... life intervened so
done nowt with them ... I remember hearing there's something b0rked with
I/O on the 2350s in general, not sure if it's just edge cases or
generally fucked?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/05/2025 11:43, Theo wrote:

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I got some of these seriously cheap from Ali Express, They are
essentially a PI PICO on a much smaller board with fewer  accessible pins. >>>
Has anyone used one?

When the PICO2 came out, I bought a couple of PiMoroni 2350 boards, both
smaller than official PICO2 boards, one with USB-C and fewer pins, one
with full set of pins but no USB port on-board ... life intervened so
done nowt with them ... I remember hearing there's something b0rked with
I/O on the 2350s in general, not sure if it's just edge cases or
generally fucked?

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/raspberry-pi-rp2350-e9-erratum-redefined-as-input-mode-leakage-current/

basically if you want a pulldown on an input pin there's chunky leakage current. That can also affect external circuitry that isn't expecting it,
eg if you have a resistive divider as the leakage could drag the voltage down. You can end up with I/Os getting stuck halfway and effectively latching old values.

That could cause some issues if you're doing a drop in replacement for a RP2040 but if you use stronger external pullup/pulldowns it should avoid the issue.

It looks like they haven't done a respin to fix it thus far.

Theo

Ah. But the boards I am talking about have allegedly pukka RP2040 chips
on them

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008120181701.html


It's OK...I take it no one here has used them. Well I'll report back
when I have. So far all I did was plug one in and fire up with
bootselect button pushed. It looked like a Pico does.

Lightweight too. 1.75g

--
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.”

Thomas Sowell

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Theo wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

When the PICO2 came out, I bought a couple of PiMoroni 2350 boards, both

smaller than official PICO2 boards, one with USB-C and fewer pins

<https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603>

one with full set of pins but no USB port on-board ...

<https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

I remember hearing there's something b0rked with I/O on the 2350s

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/20/raspberry-pi-rp2350-e9-erratum-redefined-as-input-mode-leakage-current/

basically if you want a pulldown on an input pin there's chunky leakage current.

Thanks.

It looks like they haven't done a respin to fix it thus far.

the BusPirate folks had issues with their BP5XL boards and needed to
junk a batch, I see that redesigned as the BP6 it's now on sale ...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 06/05/2025 14:19, Theo wrote:

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

the BusPirate folks had issues with their BP5XL boards and needed to
junk a batch, I see that redesigned as the BP6 it's now on sale ...

Yes, that's the kind of application where it's a problem. You attach GPIOs to random stuff and intend to probe what's there. That means you flip through the internal settings for input/output/pullup/pulldown and listen out to how the input changes.

The leakage affects that kind of application badly (input pins should be high impedance but they aren't here) but if you are putting the chip in a board where you already know what's on the other end of the pin, you can design the circuit appropriately.

RPis are more likely to be used in situations where you take the MCU and plug in and out random things onto the pins which are affected by it, compared with other MCUs where they only ever get put on vendor PCBs where everything is predetermined in the schematic. So it's really a hobbyist focused problem rather than a wider problem.

Theo

All my Pis end up on my design of PCB where stuff is either disabled or
its strictly controlled

I cant see why anyone would enable an input pin and leave it floating.
Its simply bad design

If you're making a logic analyser, that's what you do. That's effectively
what the Bus Pirate is. (It will also generate some of the protocols it analyses, but that's a different feature)

Anyhow they didn't leave the pins floating - they enabled the onboard
pulldown resistor. The problem is that the pulldown has unexpected side effects.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

the BusPirate folks had issues with their BP5XL boards and needed to
junk a batch, I see that redesigned as the BP6 it's now on sale ...

Yes, that's the kind of application where it's a problem. You attach GPIOs
to random stuff and intend to probe what's there. That means you flip
through the internal settings for input/output/pullup/pulldown and listen
out to how the input changes.

The leakage affects that kind of application badly (input pins should be
high impedance but they aren't here) but if you are putting the chip in a
board where you already know what's on the other end of the pin, you can
design the circuit appropriately.

RPis are more likely to be used in situations where you take the MCU and
plug in and out random things onto the pins which are affected by it,
compared with other MCUs where they only ever get put on vendor PCBs where everything is predetermined in the schematic. So it's really a hobbyist focused problem rather than a wider problem.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/05/2025 14:19, Theo wrote:

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

the BusPirate folks had issues with their BP5XL boards and needed to
junk a batch, I see that redesigned as the BP6 it's now on sale ...

Yes, that's the kind of application where it's a problem. You attach GPIOs to random stuff and intend to probe what's there. That means you flip through the internal settings for input/output/pullup/pulldown and listen
out to how the input changes.

The leakage affects that kind of application badly (input pins should be
high impedance but they aren't here) but if you are putting the chip in a board where you already know what's on the other end of the pin, you can design the circuit appropriately.

RPis are more likely to be used in situations where you take the MCU and
plug in and out random things onto the pins which are affected by it, compared with other MCUs where they only ever get put on vendor PCBs where everything is predetermined in the schematic. So it's really a hobbyist focused problem rather than a wider problem.

Theo

All my Pis end up on my design of PCB where stuff is either disabled or
its strictly controlled

I cant see why anyone would enable an input pin and leave it floating.
Its simply bad design


--
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.”

Thomas Sowell

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008120181701.html

They clearly don't want my 77p, refused in Firefox and Edge

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/05/2025 14:52, Andy Burns wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008120181701.html

They clearly don't want my 77p, refused in Firefox and Edge

I bought using firefox np

--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/05/2025 14:36, Theo wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 06/05/2025 14:19, Theo wrote:

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

the BusPirate folks had issues with their BP5XL boards and needed to
junk a batch, I see that redesigned as the BP6 it's now on sale ...

Yes, that's the kind of application where it's a problem. You attach GPIOs >>> to random stuff and intend to probe what's there. That means you flip
through the internal settings for input/output/pullup/pulldown and listen >>> out to how the input changes.

The leakage affects that kind of application badly (input pins should be >>> high impedance but they aren't here) but if you are putting the chip in a >>> board where you already know what's on the other end of the pin, you can >>> design the circuit appropriately.

RPis are more likely to be used in situations where you take the MCU and >>> plug in and out random things onto the pins which are affected by it,
compared with other MCUs where they only ever get put on vendor PCBs where >>> everything is predetermined in the schematic. So it's really a hobbyist >>> focused problem rather than a wider problem.

Theo

All my Pis end up on my design of PCB where stuff is either disabled or
its strictly controlled

I cant see why anyone would enable an input pin and leave it floating.
Its simply bad design

If you're making a logic analyser, that's what you do. That's effectively what the Bus Pirate is. (It will also generate some of the protocols it analyses, but that's a different feature)

NO. given that the logic analyser would most likely want to be 5V you
would have the inputs pulled down externally with a resistor in series.

Anyhow they didn't leave the pins floating - they enabled the onboard pulldown resistor. The problem is that the pulldown has unexpected side effects.

AFAIAC as a electronic engineer anything that isnt exnternally connected
is 'floating'

Theo

--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/05/2025 14:52, Andy Burns wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008120181701.html

They clearly don't want my 77p, refused in Firefox and Edge

What costs 77p ?

Cheapest showing now is 3.37 for two, minimum order for free postage is
£8 otherwise postage is probably £1.99 but it doesn't actually say.

--
Brian Gregory (in England).

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 6 May 2025 15:43:02 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

AFAIAC as a electronic engineer anything that isnt exnternally connected
is 'floating'

There is something called “tristate”.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Brian Gregory wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008120181701.html

They clearly don't want my 77p, refused in Firefox and Edge

What costs 77p ?

Two RP2040 boards with free P&P, actually it's gone down to 76p today (I
think the dollar price was 99ç so that's probably currency fluctuation,
still comes up with a vague error when I press "buy".

Cheapest showing now is 3.37 for two, minimum order for free postage is
£8 otherwise postage is probably £1.99 but it doesn't actually say.Only 1 left ...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Theo wrote:

Aliexpress knocks a few bucks off the price of everything as a 'welcome
deal' if you aren't logged in. If you login as an existing customer the prices go up.

I'm logged in, with name/address/currency/payment methods all shown from
my account and the 2x RP2040 in my cart, showing the 76p total.

It just says "Order unsuccessful, There may be an internet issue. Close
the app and restart to try again."

It's not the first time I had issues with aliexpress, my firefox used to
hate their "slidy thing" on the logon dialogue.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

John R Walliker <jrwalliker@gmail.com> wrote:

On 06/05/2025 22:21, Brian Gregory wrote:

On 06/05/2025 14:52, Andy Burns wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008120181701.html

They clearly don't want my 77p, refused in Firefox and Edge

What costs 77p ?

Cheapest showing now is 3.37 for two, minimum order for free postage is
£8 otherwise postage is probably £1.99 but it doesn't actually say.

I can still see a price of 77p each for two (including VAT) with free shipping.
For an extra 18p each you can also get an RP2350 board. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008519098883.html
These are described as "Welcome Deal".
Maybe the price somehow depends on cookie settings?
I got the low prices in Firefox and Chrome, but I haven't
actually tried to follow through and buy.

Aliexpress knocks a few bucks off the price of everything as a 'welcome
deal' if you aren't logged in. If you login as an existing customer the
prices go up. If you are a new customer and try to order lots of stuff, you might find the 'welcome deals' only apply to the first item(s) you buy.

I think all the Chinese sites do that - I ordered something from wish.com
for $18 when everywhere else was selling it for $36, and I think that was
their new customer discount. I think Temu is the same.

Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

I'm logged in, with name/address/currency/payment methods all shown from
my account and the 2x RP2040 in my cart, showing the 76p total.

It just says "Order unsuccessful, There may be an internet issue. Close
the app and restart to try again."

It's not the first time I had issues with aliexpress, my firefox used to
hate their "slidy thing" on the logon dialogue.

They get really antsy if you don't run all their spying scripts - ublock
origin blocks 53 on just the front page, and if you scroll the spying
count climbs - 126, 174, ...

Sometimes they just go in a sulk and do the slidy thing and/or lock me out,
or force a login just to browse products. The current annoyance is I click
on something that's in a 'bundle deal' and it shows me a full page of bundle deals but no details about the product I was interested in.[1]

It's a hellhole, but it's a cheap hellhole with often stuff that can't be
got elsewhere...

Theo


[1] Workaround, I get a bundle deal link like:

https://www.aliexpress.com/ssr/300000512/BundleDeals2?spm=
&a2g0o.home.pcJustForYou.14.[hex-id]
&productIds=1005007476886364:[16 digit decimal number]
&pha_manifest=ssr&_immersiveMode=true&disableNav=YES
&sourceName=RECOMMENDProduct&utparam-url=scene%3ApcJustForYou%7Cquery_from%3A

If I extract the productId and convert it to a URL

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007476886364.html

then I can see the item I clicked on.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 07/05/2025 14:05, Theo wrote:

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

I'm logged in, with name/address/currency/payment methods all shown from
my account and the 2x RP2040 in my cart, showing the 76p total.

It just says "Order unsuccessful, There may be an internet issue. Close
the app and restart to try again."

It's not the first time I had issues with aliexpress, my firefox used to
hate their "slidy thing" on the logon dialogue.

They get really antsy if you don't run all their spying scripts - ublock origin blocks 53 on just the front page, and if you scroll the spying
count climbs - 126, 174, ...

Sometimes they just go in a sulk and do the slidy thing and/or lock me out, or force a login just to browse products. The current annoyance is I click on something that's in a 'bundle deal' and it shows me a full page of bundle deals but no details about the product I was interested in.[1]

It's a hellhole, but it's a cheap hellhole with often stuff that can't be
got elsewhere...

Theo

[1] Workaround, I get a bundle deal link like:

https://www.aliexpress.com/ssr/300000512/BundleDeals2?spm=
&a2g0o.home.pcJustForYou.14.[hex-id]
&productIds=1005007476886364:[16 digit decimal number]
&pha_manifest=ssr&_immersiveMode=true&disableNav=YES
&sourceName=RECOMMENDProduct&utparam-url=scene%3ApcJustForYou%7Cquery_from%3A

If I extract the productId and convert it to a URL

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007476886364.html

then I can see the item I clicked on.

Mmm. It works OK with me ans ublock, yes the bundle deals are bollocks
mostly.



--
"And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch".

Gospel of St. Mathew 15:14

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 07/05/2025 15:12, John R Walliker wrote:

It's a hellhole, but it's a cheap hellhole with often stuff that can't be
got elsewhere...

Yes, I bought some silicon nitride plates which were almost unobtainable elsewhere.
John

Only thing I had that was undeniable shit were some darlingtion power transistors that blew up an amp and eventually a loudpseaker.

Not enough voltage rating compared to what was stamped on them.

It was like going back to the good old days of Sinclair Radionics with
his 'super' rejected transistors rebadged as 'Sinclair 101s' or whatever.


--
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to
rule.
– H. L. Mencken, American journalist, 1880-1956

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)