A demo board for exploring the digital video and audio capabilities of Raspberry Pi Pico, with HDMI connector, SD card slot, line level I2S audio and buttons.
Intrigued by the possibilities of VGA Demo Base but no longer own a D-sub cable? No problem! This board is an all-digital conversion of Raspberry Pi's VGA reference design, great for if you want to start hacking on video and/or audio output from a Raspberry Pi Pico and piping it straight into a modern monitor.
Please note that DV Demo Base is an experimental dev board for intrepid AV haxxors, which relies on third party software that we neither fully understand or maintain. You'll probably need prior experience with Pico projects and C++ to do anything useful with it.
Raspberry Pi Pico is not included. Your Pico will need to have pin headers soldered to it (with the pins pointing downwards) to attach to our add-on boards.
Features
- HDMI connector
- PCM5100A DAC for line out audio over I2S (datasheet)
- SD card slot
- Reset button
- Socket headers to install your Raspberry Pi Pico
- Three user-controllable switches
- Rubber feet
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico*
- No soldering required (as long as your Pico has header pins attached)
- Programmable with C/C++
- Schematic
* Note that the pinout of this board doesn't align with the new HSTX peripheral on Raspberry Pi Pico 2.
Software
We've been using this board with Wren6991's nifty PicoDVI library, which you can use to output a bitbanged digital video signal from an overclocked RP2040 or RP2350 board. To demonstrate the additional functions of this board, we've put together an AV player example that lets you read video files from the SD card and output video and audio simultaneously.
It's now also possible to use this board with Pico and Pico W and CircuitPython's fancy new DVI stuff, thanks to RetiredWizard on our forums!
Perhaps you'd like to use it to play NES games? Check out this Adafruit Learn Guide:
About Raspberry Pi Pico
Raspberry Pi Pico is a flexible, low cost microcontroller development board from the folks at Raspberry Pi, based on their very own chip - the RP2040. It's easily programmable over USB with C/C++ or MicroPython, and ideal for using in all sorts of physical computing projects, devices and inventions - we're so excited to see what you make with it!
We've called our Pico-sized add-ons packs, as they're designed to attach to the back of your Pico as if it were wearing a very stylish backpack (or a miniature jet pack, if you prefer). We've also got Pico bases (larger add-on boards with a space to mount your Pico on top) and some other boards that let you do interesting hackerly things like using multiple packs at once - click here to view them all!