When we think of an m.2 slot in our laptop or similar, it’s usually in the context of its PCI connectivity for high-speed applications such as solid state disks. It’s a connector that offers much more than that interface though, making it suitable for some unexpected add-ons. As an example [MagicWolfi] has produced an m.2 card which contains the equivalent of a Raspberry Pi Pico.
The board itself has the familiar m.2 edge connector at the bottom, and the RP2040 GPIO lines as postage-stamp indentations round the edges. On the m.2 front is uses the USB interface as well as a UART and the I2C lines, as well as some of the interfaces we’re less familiar with such as ALERT, WAKE, DISABLE1/2, LED 1/2, and VENDOR_DEFINED.
On one level this provides a handy internal microcontroller card with which you can do all the things you’d expect from a Pi Pico, but on another it provides the fascinating possibility of the Pico performing a watchdog or other function for the host device. We would be genuinely interested to hear more about the use of the m.2 slot in this way.
If you’d like to know more about m.2, we’ve taken a look at it in more depth.
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