I'm posting this here because after going through several forums this one seemed the most appropriate;
I am working on miniaturizing a project (remote control car), I already have the first version that consists of a controller and the car itself, the car works as follows:
- Main micro controller: Seeed Studio XIAO RP2040
- Bluetooth receiver: HC-05 module (configurated as slave)
- Motor controller: TB6612FNG breakout board
This is what the car PCB currently looks like:
As you can see, the PCB takes up too much space to house all the components with their respective breakout boards, so my goal is to reduce its size, for this, I am looking to replace the breakout board of the TB6612FNG only with its micro controller (TB6612FNG), which will be relatively easy so my main difficulty is that I would like to remove the Seeed Studio XIAO RP2040 and replace it with a RP2040 (only the chip, without any kind of breakout board), for this my first idea was to program a raspberry pi pico, desolder its RP2040 and 'transplant' it directly on the new PCB that I will design, the problem with doing this is that this method will be expensive to replicate since I would like to do more projects of this type.
I have read in a couple of forums that it is possible to use programming components such as the FTDI modules or specialized devices such as Atmel-ICE, however I have not been able to find more information to guide me in this process, I have even asked Chat GPT but there seems not to be a lot of information about adapters for the RP2040 compatible with these programming devices.
My utopian idea is to have a module on which I can temporarily mount the RP2040 in the same way that RAM modules are mounted on a laptop (not requiring soldering), connect it via USB, program the RP2040 and then be able to solder it onto a custom PCB.
I do understand that there would be some restrictions, for example, about the voltage sent to the RP2040 which must be controlled in my custom PCB and currently I don't see a huge problem there.
Is there something like this? What is this process called? Is there any tool to achieve this process?
Note: my goal is to reduce the space taken in order to get a better skill with small components, it's not about arranging components in a certain way.
