Adafruit Feather RP2040 SCORPIO

Overview

The Adafruit Feather RP2040 SCORPIO is a purpose-built NeoPixel driver board in the Feather form factor, designed to control up to eight independent WS2812 / NeoPixel LED strips simultaneously. The board dedicates GPIO 16–23 as consecutive PIO outputs and includes a 3V-to-5V level shifter (configurable for either input or output direction), so NeoPixel data lines are driven at the correct 5V logic level that maximizes reliable communication with the strips.

Built on the dual-core RP2040 at 125 MHz, the SCORPIO provides 264 KB of SRAM and 8 MB of SPI flash. The RP2040's Programmable I/O (PIO) peripheral is what makes true multi-channel concurrent NeoPixel driving possible — each of the eight outputs is driven by the same PIO state machine cycling through consecutive GPIO pins. The generous 264 KB RAM can buffer thousands of NeoPixel color values in memory.

The board includes a USB Type-C connector for power and programming, a built-in 200 mA LiPo battery charger, a STEMMA QT I2C connector, a status NeoPixel, red LED on pin 13, four mounting holes, and a bootloader button on GPIO 7. It is fully compatible with CircuitPython, MicroPython, and Arduino, and works with the NeoPXL8 library for efficient multi-strand driving. Ideal for LED walls, holiday lighting, and large NeoPixel installations.