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Show HN: PicoVision – A HDMI video stick with dual RP2040 chips (CPU and GPU) (pimoroni.com)
7 points by whiskers on Oct 18, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment
I thought it might be a fun one for the HN crowd, to celebrate the launch of our latest product we're running a demoscene competition to see what people can squeeze out of it - details here: https://shop.pimoroni.com/pages/win-a-500-gift-card-in-our-p...

PicoVision sports two RP2040 chips (one on a PicoW with WiFi and Bluetooth) acting as GPU and CPU allowing you to drive a HDMI display with smooth fullscreen animation - it can even play DOOM!

There's a heap of interesting features built into the GPU firmware including support for "soft" (?!) hardware sprites, palette modes, scrolling, and more! The GPU and CPU share a pair of 8MB PSRAM chips that are swapped each frame using an analog multiplexer to allow them to pass the framebuffer and other information between them with no overhead during VSYNC.

It also has a HDMI connector, a microSD socket, GPIO pins, a Qw/ST connector, some buttons, and audio out meaning there are a lot of possibilities from gaming to digital signage and anything inbetween!




I started putting together a Lua-based toy microcomputer [1] using PicoVision and a USB mini B to A adapter to connect a mouse/keyboard. It’s a hacky mess, but it serves as a proof of concept.

There’s also a herculean work in progress to bring PicoVision support to the 32blit embedded game SDK [2]

(disclaimer: I also worked on PicoVision)

1. https://github.com/gadgetoid/picovision-micro-computer/tree/... 2. https://github.com/32blit/32blit-sdk/pull/829




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