For anyone who wants some cheap hardware to tinker with on the PicoCalc, but doesn’t want to bother with soldering, or even opening up the case (for fear of breaking the fragile screen), I found a cheap little plug and play board that works well. The pinout fits perfectly on the side port of the PicoCalc, and it fits pretty much flush against the case, with the board facing downward. You just need to skip the first pin (the 3V3 out), but all the available GPIO on the side, along with GND are used for this. Unfortunately, the LED colors are fixed – they’re not color changing. But it’s a cheap little device that can be plugged in to give 6 LEDs of different colors.
I only tested it with PicoMite, but it should be easy to turn the LEDs on and off with pretty much any programmable firmware.
In the case of PicoMite:
' PINS are GPx where x is 2, 3, 4, 5, 21, or 28
' This will blink the red LED forever
SETPIN GP2, DOUT
DO
PIN(GP2) = 1
PAUSE 100
PIN(GP2) = 0
PAUSE 100
LOOP
It might be nice to have a thin plastic 3D printed cover for this thing, since plugging it in as-is means the exposed solder points are kind of sharp. I’m not sure if there’s much danger of it shorting out or causing problems, since it’s incredibly simple. I’m also not sure how practical it is anyway, more of just a little thing to tinker with. Might be fun to use the LEDs for feedback from other programs or games though.
Aliexpress links are notoriously dependent on geographic location, so this link may not work, but maybe the screenshot will help if you want to search for it. The listing I used was a “Choice” listing with free shipping over $10.
