Adafruit Proto Doubler PiCowbell for Pico and PicoW

The Adafruit Proto Doubler PiCowBell is intended to be treated like a mini solder-less proto plate to simplify programming and sensor connectivity for your Raspberry Pi Pico board. Reset button? Yes! STEMMA QT / Qwiic connector for fast I2C? Indeed. Battery with recharging and on/off switch? Affirmative. Plug-and-play so no soldering necessary when used with a Pico H or Pico WH? Here you go!

The Doubler is like if we used a 'Clone Tool' on the Proto Under Plate PiCowbell - you get two slots side-by-side which means you can easily add accessories to your Pico or Pico W without soldering on any stacking headers.

LiPoly Battery Charging Support

The Doubler also gives you Lipoly/LiIon support circuitry so you can take your Pico project on the go. Use any 3.7V/4.2V single-cell Lithium battery with a JST 2-PH connector in the correct polarity. The battery will automagically charge with the Pico is plugged into USB, and switch over seamlessly to battery when USB power is removed.

By default the charge rate is 500mA for use with 500mAh+ sized batteries. You can cut a jumper to reduce the charge rate to 250mA if using 250mAh to 500mAh battery. So you don't have to unplug the battery often, a slide switch is connected to the Pico Enable pin, so you can disable the Pico's 3.3V power supply completely - this is as close as we can get to 'turning off' the Pico.

Alkaline/NiMH Battery Pack Support

You can also cut a different jumper to disconnect the charger completely from the battery, which means you can use 3xAA or 3xAAA battery packs for alkaline or NiMH battery usage. Of course, you will need an external NiMH charger in that case. 

Double Socket Headers

This board has double sockets already soldered on, you can plug in your Pico and 'Bell boards directly in, and get access to a prototyping area underneath as well as a second row of socket pins. The second row means you can connect wires just by poking them into the header, either directly to LEDs or buttons or to jumper to a breadboard. So you don't have to look up or count pins, each socket is nicely labeled. There's also 4 mounting holes for easy attachment to an underplate. 

The dual socket headers we use are 'hollow' - that means you can connect through the back if desired. Specifically, you can use Pico Stacking Headers to plug through to some other device that is expecting Pico pins. Also, in theory, if you soldered pin headers on the 'wrong side' of a Pico, you could plug it up through the bottom.

We recommend picking up a set of little rubber feet to protect your desk if you're not mounting this board to something else.

Features:

We do not have I2C pullups on the board, but your Qwiic/QT breakout board or accessory likely already has them onboard. If using the Philhower Arduino core, the Wire peripheral is already set up to use IO4 and IO5. If using CircuitPython or MicroPython, you'll need to let the code know to look at 4+5 for SDA+SCL pins.