Flux Blog

With this release, Flux can take your requirements, generate a complete plan, and execute multi-step workflows right inside the editor. It researches components, builds schematics, places and routes parts, and runs checks along the way — pausing for your feedback when it needs direction.

Think of it as your first AI intern: fast, explainable, and eager to learn — but still guided by someone who knows the craft. Flux works transparently, explains its reasoning, and remembers how you like to work.

It’s the biggest step yet toward the first true AI hardware engineer.

This new functionality is available now. Log in to Flux today to take it for a spin. Full workflow capabilities will roll out gradually over the coming days.

Make a detailed plan with Flux

Start by telling Flux what you need to build. Flux now understands design requirements—the goals, constraints, and specs that define your project. Describe the functionality, power targets, interfaces, layer count, or components you want to use, and Flux will turn that into a complete, step-by-step plan.

You’ll see a clear outline of the plan: parts research, schematic creation, layout, checks, and milestones for review. From there, simply tell Flux about any desired changes—add details, reorder tasks, or lock decisions—and it will refine the plan for you. It’s up to you how in the weeds you get.

Next, click “Start” and Flux will begin get to work, sharing progress and decisions along the way, and checking in with you at key points to get your feedback.

Try these prompts:

“Design a sub-25 × 25 mm wearable PCB with Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and on-board battery charging.
‍
It must include a BLE SoC (OTA-capable), a low-power accelerometer with interrupt/wake, power-path + charging for a 1-cell Li-ion/LiPo, and headers/pads for programming and test.

Power: 1-cell Li-ion/LiPo with on-board charger (5 V USB input) optimized for low quiescent current.”

{{button-1}}

“Design a compact field-oriented control (FOC) BLDC motor driver board.
‍
It must include Bluetooth Low Energy for wireless control and data-logging.
‍
The key subsystems are: power stage and gate drive, sensing, MCU selection, comms, and protection to thermal/mechanical stress.
‍
Power: USB-C PD at 12 V (with local regulation as required).”

{{button-2}}

“Design a low-noise electret microphone preamplifier for a 24-bit ADC, integrated into a consumer household device.
‍
It must have switchable 20–40 dB gain, correctly sized coupling capacitors with a ~20 Hz high-pass, an output anti-alias RC for ~20 kHz bandwidth, and thorough decoupling plus pop-suppression.
‍
Follow the op-amp, microphone, and ADC datasheets and industry best practices; use the 3.3 V analog rail and make cost-effective component choices without asking for spec confirmation.
‍
Power: USB-C 5 V input (with local regulation as required).”

{{button-3}}

Execute multi-step workflows

When you approve a plan, Flux doesn’t just hand you suggestions—it gets to work.It now executes full workflows inside the editor, acting like an extension of your team that can solve real problems while keeping you in the loop.

Flux handles the structured parts of the process—researching components, wiring schematics, placing and routing parts, and reviewing its own work for correctness—while you focus on the decisions that need human judgment.

You can think of it like having an intern on your team who works fast, communicates clearly, and never forgets a detail. Feel free to close your browser or go for a walk, Flux will keep working in the background, and drop you a line when it’s time to check in.

What Flux can now execute inside the editor:

• Add, replace, and connect components in schematics
• Update part properties and validate alternates
• Place components on your layout (coming soon!)
• Route nets with awareness of your rules and constraints
• Run ERC/DRC checks and surface issues for review

Stay in control at every step

Flux is built for collaboration. Every plan, action, and decision it makes is visible and explainable so you can review, guide, and adjust as it goes.

You can pause execution, modify the plan mid-flow, or roll back using version history. Lock regions, nets, or components to prevent changes, or ask Flux to revisit a specific step. And because Flux runs inside a full browser-based ECAD, you can jump in and edit anytime—make manual tweaks, move parts, or add your own changes without breaking its flow.

Teach Flux how you work

Flux doesn’t just follow instructions—it learns through your conversations and feedback. When you correct something or clarify how you like to work, Flux can ask if you want to remember it. You choose whether that learning should apply just to the project you’re in or across your entire account.

Over time, Flux picks up the same kind of tribal knowledge your team already shares—naming conventions, layout habits, design rules—and starts applying them automatically. You can refine what it remembers, edit entries, or forget things entirely through the Knowledge Base.

It’s how you teach Flux to work the way you do—so it keeps getting smarter, faster, and more aligned with your standards. Learn more.

Join the new era of hardware design

The new planning and execution architecture inside Flux is designed to scale—so the agent you’re working with today will keep getting smarter and more capable over time.

This is just the beginning. You can already fork your projects and have Flux explore multiple directions in parallel. Soon you’ll be able to delegate even broader, more complex, assignments to Flux, and have it build even more advanced boards.

We envision a future where Flux is not just one AI intern, but a coordinated group of AI engineers, each with their own specialization, that seamlessly integrate with your team. The endgame is a world where hardware teams are infinitely scalable: totally parallel, deeply collaborative, and still human-led.

Hardware is entering a new era—where AI becomes part of the team, instead of part of the toolkit.

It starts here. Give Flux a job, review the plan, and help define how engineers and AI build hardware together.

{{try-plans-ai-workflows}}

Here’s the hard truth: most hardware startups don’t fail because they can’t build a prototype or find a manufacturer. While still difficult, technical execution is getting easier every year—modern tools, AI included, are streamlining that part of the journey. What kills most teams are the missed fundamentals:

• Are you building something people truly want?
• Is there a market large enough to sustain you?
• Do you have a defensible advantage?

Hardware raises the stakes because iteration is slower and costlier. You can’t afford to stumble on business basics, design fundamentals, or customer insight. The teams that win are the ones that maximize their rate of learning—by de-risking the business model while iterating the product as fast as possible.

That’s why we put together this bookshelf. It’s not just about engineering or manufacturing (though you’ll find the best guides here). It’s about sharpening judgment, broadening perspective, and giving technical founders the tools to build companies people love.

Company Building at Founder Speed

For hardware founders, the hardest part usually isn’t the prototype—it’s building the company around it. These books focus on judgment, focus, and leadership: how to move fast without losing clarity, protect the details that matter, and make the calls that keep a small team alive. They’re about operating at founder speed when time, money, and attention are always scarce.

{{book-set-1}}

{{underline}}

From Prototype to Factory Floor

Hardware doesn’t forgive sloppy execution. Once you leave the lab, mistakes multiply—costs rise, timelines slip, and quality issues get baked into production. These books help founders treat manufacturing as part of the product itself: learning to engage suppliers early, de-risk decisions, and build systems that scale without collapsing under their own weight.

{{book-set-2}}

{{underline}}

Electronics, Without the Folklore

Every hardware founder eventually gets burned by the basics. Power rails, grounding, EMI, provisioning flows—these are where folklore and half-remembered rules can cost you entire boards. These books turn “tribal knowledge” into principles you can rely on, helping you avoid expensive surprises and design products that actually hold up in the field.

{{book-set-3}}

{{underline}}

Design Thinking & Product Insight

Great hardware isn’t just about circuits and enclosures—it’s about making something people actually want to use. These books teach the fundamentals of design thinking, product discovery, and usability. For hardware founders, they’re the bridge between technical execution and customer love—the difference between a product that works and a product that wins.

{{book-set-4}}

{{underline}}

Stories That Keep You Going

Building hardware is a long, uncertain grind. Sometimes what you need isn’t another playbook—it’s proof that others have walked this road before. These books capture the culture, discipline, and stubbornness of teams who built under pressure, kept their vision intact, and shipped work that mattered.

{{book-set-5}}

{{underline}}

Get Support from a Community of Hardware Founders

These books shape how we think at Flux, but the real progress comes from learning together. That’s why we created the Flux Hardware Slack Community. It’s where founders connect to:

• Swap advice, share book recommendations, and compare notes on what’s working (and what isn’t).
• Find peers who understand the unique grind of building hardware, so you don’t have to figure it all out alone.

You can also book design reviews with the Flux team to receive actionable feedback before you head to production. Please let us know if there are other resources you’d like us to provide that could your hardware startup become a massive success! We’re here to help.

In the right scenarios, it’s already delivering sharper reasoning, smarter reviews, and more accurate design decisions than anything we’ve shipped before. We wanted to get it into your hands immediately so you can explore what’s possible alongside us. It’s early, it’s raw, and we want you to push it. Break it. Tell us where it shines.

Try It Now

You can start using it right away. Open any project in Flux and launch Copilot. Click the model dropdown at the top of the chat panel, select “Next-gen” and then give it a real challenge. Some great starter prompts to see its strengths include:

“Perform a top-to-bottom schematic review for correctness, completeness, and robustness. Assess power, clocks/resets, signal interfaces, analog paths, protection, and passive choices.”

“Replace all low-stock parts with alternatives that meet the same constraints.”

{{try-gpt5}}

What’s New and Better

The upgrade isn’t just that GPT-5 is a newer model. It brings a different caliber of intelligence to Copilot:

• Stronger reasoning and planning for complex, multi-step problems.
• More accurate part and constraint decisions, often with clearer explanations.
• Sharper design reviews that catch subtle issues and propose fixes.
• Richer, more verbose answers that lay out assumptions, tradeoffs, and edge cases.

These improvements land harder in Flux because Copilot already has deep, live context on your design—down to parts, pins, nets, properties, constraints, and stackups—so reinforcement models and LLMs can work side-by-side from the canvas up to system architecture. And because Flux is built for agentic workflows—stepwise actions, constraint-aware edits, and iterative design loops right where you work—GPT-5 isn’t starting from scratch; it applies improved reasoning directly to your schematic or layout. Layered on top is a knowledge base of industry best practices and embedded design/process checks, so your AI partner starts from seasoned experience and turns that context into answers that are immediately relevant and actionable.

{{underline}}

Early Win from the Weekend

In just 48 hours of testing, we saw moments that made us stop and say, “This is new.”

Design a low-noise microphone preamplifier for an electret condenser mic feeding a 24-bit ADC. You must calculate the bias network, gain-setting resistors, coupling capacitors, input high-pass cutoff, output anti-aliasing RC, and decoupling layout. Follow the op-amp and microphone capsule datasheets, ADC input requirements, and industry best practices. It will be integrated into a design. Supply: 3.3V analog rail. Mic bias: 2.0 V through resistor, current ~0.5 mA. Target gain: 20 dB to 40 dB switchable. Bandwidth: 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Input noise target: as low as practical. Include pop-suppression considerations and star-grounding strategy.

{{copy-the-prompt}}

In this case Flux took a plain-English prompt and produced a full low-noise mic preamp to a 24-bit ADC—calculating the right bias, gain, and filter values, choosing real parts, then placing and wiring the entire block with decoupling, VCM bias, and star-ground best practices. It even audited itself (fixed missed ties, made gain legs switchable). The result is a ready-to-review schematic 80% away from layout built end-to-end—complex, competent, and fast.

{{underline}}

Getting the most from “Nex Gen” model in Flux

• Read the whole answer. The “Next Gen” model is verbose on purpose—the assumptions, edge cases, and self-checks are where the value lives.
• Front-load context. In your first message, share goals; rails & loads; key interfaces (e.g., USB-C: CC1/CC2, D+/D−, SBU); constraints (cost/size/EMI); and manufacturing rules of thumb. Keep answering follow-ups to deepen the design.
• Scope tightly. When wiring schematics, tackle one rail, one bus, or one block at a time.
• Plan before you act. Validate the change plan against requirements before applying edits—changing the plan is cheaper than undoing work.

{{underline}}

What’s Next

Right now GPT-5 powers Copilot’s chat, but this is just the beginning. We’re already working on:

• Tighter loops between chat and in-editor actions.
• More constraint-aware placement and routing.
• Datasheet-to-design transformations in minutes.
• Smarter, in-context automated fixes.

Open Flux now, switch Copilot to “Next-gen” and see how it handles your next design challenge. The sooner you try it, the more your feedback can shape the next leap in AI-powered hardware design.

{{try-gpt5}}

‍

The reality in 2025 is this:

"AI isn’t replacing electrical engineers but it is starting to feel like a useful teammate."

Not a perfect one, not one you fully trust yet, but one that can save time on the tedious parts, catch mistakes earlier, and help you iterate from idea to prototype faster.

Across the industry, adoption is uneven. Traditional desktop ECAD tools like Altium and KiCad still treat AI as an optional plugin or an external script-driven add-on. Meanwhile, newer cloud-native platforms, most notably Flux.ai, have begun integrating AI directly into the design loop: reading datasheets, proposing schematics, suggesting parts, routing boards, and even explaining the reasoning behind design choices.

But engineers are right to be cautious. PCB design isn’t text prediction, it’s physics, constraints, standards, and consequences. A misrouted high-speed lane, wrong MOSFET footprint, or power sequencing mistake isn’t a typo; it’s a lost week, lost money, and sometimes a lost product.

This article focuses on the questions hardware engineers really ask, the practical, high-stakes ones that determine whether AI can actually save time or just create new risks. Each section breaks down how modern ECAD tools like Flux, Altium, KiCad, and EasyEDA — handle these real-world workflows.

{{underline}}

Is there an AI that can plan a PCB design from a product spec and ask clarifying questions?

Most engineers start with vague product requirements — “battery-powered sensor,” “USB-C powered device,” “motor controller” but translating that into electrical design constraints is slow and error-prone. An AI that can read a spec and ask the same clarifying questions a junior engineer would (power budget, interfaces, sensors, EMI constraints) reduces iteration time and catches missing requirements early.

Short answer: Flux is the only ECAD that does this natively today.

Flux.ai

Flux can interpret natural-language specs, ask clarifying questions, propose block diagrams and functional structure then it generates a detailed plan. It behaves like a junior hardware engineer thinking out loud.

Try this prompt:

Design a sub-25 × 25 mm wearable PCB with Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and on-board battery charging.

It must include a BLE SoC (OTA-capable), a low-power accelerometer with interrupt/wake, power-path + charging for a 1-cell Li-ion/LiPo, and headers/pads for programming and test.

Power: 1-cell Li-ion/LiPo with on-board charger (5 V USB input) optimized for low quiescent current.”

{{try-this-prompt-xyz}}

Altium

No native AI planning. External tools may help with ideation, but no clarifying questions.

KiCad

Completely manual. You are on your own.

EasyEDA

Has basic AI chat, but no requirements-driven design planning.

{{underline}}

Can an AI suggest parts, build schematic diagram, then route with my guidance?

In real workflows, engineers often spend hours picking components, checking footprints, wiring standard circuits, and placing obvious blocks like regulators, microcontrollers, and connectors. A capable AI that drafts these first passes while letting the engineer steer and refine, dramatically accelerates early design cycles and frees time for deep engineering decisions.

Flux.ai

Flux currently has the most advanced AI-assisted design flow:

• AI part suggestions
• Schematic and system block generation
• Auto-routing called AI Auto-Layout
• Iterative human-in-the-loop guidance

Altium

Altium can help with component data via Octopart, but AI doesn't generate schematics or placement.

KiCad

No AI, only scripting through third-part plugins

EasyEDA

Basic recommendations and cloud routing, but not AI-driven.

{{underline}}

How do I teach an ECAD AI my house rules and naming conventions once?

Hardware teams develop their own standards over years, naming conventions, preferred footprints, power-tree structures, and layout principles. Re-teaching those rules every time a new engineer joins or every time you start a new board is one of the biggest sources of avoidable friction in PCB workflows.

Flux.ai

Flux solves this with its Knowledge Base, which allows engineers to store reusable electrical engineering “knowledge chunks” the AI can reference during design. Unlike static templates, the Knowledge Base includes:

• User-level rules (e.g., how you name nets, preferred library components, symbol conventions)
• Project-level rules (e.g., specific stackups, chosen IC families, grounding strategy for this board)
• Semantic triggers (“use when” cues) that automatically activate the right rule when the design context calls for it
• EE-aware organization so the AI knows which rules relate to schematics, layout, stacks, or system architecture

Flux doesn’t just store these rules, it applies them automatically when generating schematics, naming nets or choosing footprints strategies. It’s the first ECAD tool where your internal engineering standards become a living and reusable knowledge system.

Altium, KiCad, EasyEDA

These tools rely on templates, scripts, or third-party plugins but none provide persistent, context-aware AI learning or automatic implementation of company standards.

{{underline}}

AI that explains why it picked that component, does that exist?

Engineers need to trust routing, and part choices, especially when they affect signal integrity, EMI, power delivery, or thermal behavior. Having an AI that can justify decisions (“this cap is here to shorten loop inductance,” “this MOSFET variant reduces cost with identical performance”) closes the trust gap and makes AI-driven design actually usable in production workflows.

Flux.ai

One of the biggest differentiators: Flux gives clear natural-language reasoning.It explains why something routed, or chosen.

Other Tools

No explainable AI features exist.

{{underline}}

Best auto-router approaches for low-to-medium density boards in 2025

Most commercial products aren’t 12-layer high-speed monsters, they’re 2–4-layer sensor nodes, wearables, IoT modules, power converters, and mixed-signal control boards. For these designs, route quality depends far more on smart placement, clean topologies, and constraint-aware decision making than on raw high-density routing power. This is where the newest generation of AI-driven algorithms has begun outperforming classical routers.

Flux.ai

Flux’s AI Auto-Layout represents the most human-like routing behavior available in ECAD today. With Flux’s latest update, the system doesn’t simply push traces through a maze router, it imitates how real engineers reason about routing:

• It considers circuit topology (power trees, high-current loops, analog/digital partitioning).
• It routes connectors, regulators, microcontrollers, and passives in ways that minimize parasitics.
• It routes with “human-style” patterns — short runs, logical flow, good return paths, and neat organization.
• It optimizes trace paths iteratively rather than dumping a brute-forced solution.

For low-to-medium density boards (2–4 layers), Flux’ Auto-Layout produces results that closely resemble an experienced EE’s first-pass layout, not a mechanical maze-router output. It’s the first auto-layout system that actually looks designed, not auto generated.

Altium

Altium’s ActiveRoute remains one of the best deterministic routers on the market. It’s excellent when the designer put up so much time setting up constraints properly, but it still relies on classical algorithms rather than human-like reasoning.

KiCad

FreeRouting offers reasonable results for simpler boards, but it struggles with medium-density designs or anything requiring nuanced placement strategy.

EasyEDA

EasyEDA’s router is functional and fast for hobby-level projects, but lacks advanced constraint handling or professional-grade refinement.

{{underline}}

Step-by-step: using AI to review my design for obvious mistakes

Even experienced engineers overlook missing pull-ups, incorrect footprints, swapped differential pairs, or bad return paths when moving fast. AI-driven review acts like a second pair of eyes that never gets tired, catching easy-to-miss issues before fabrication, when mistakes are still cheap.

Flux.ai

Flux runs a deep AI review:

• Detects common EE mistakes
• Explains issues
• Suggests fixes

Other Tools

Altium, KiCad, and EasyEDA provide ERC/DRC — but no AI reasoning.

Flux is redefining what modern ECAD looks like

Every other tool still treats AI as a bolt-on accessory, helpful around the edges but never involved in real engineering decisions. Flux.ai takes the opposite approach: AI is embedded in the workflow from the moment you describe your product idea to the moment you’re reviewing your final layout. It asks the right questions, explains its decisions, follows your internal rules, and eliminates entire categories of tedious work that engineers have accepted for years.

This isn’t “AI for PCB design someday.” It’s the first platform where AI becomes a capable design partner today.

If you’re serious about faster iteration, fewer mistakes, and a workflow that evolves with the future of hardware development, Flux.ai is the tool that sets the new standard, and the direction the rest of the industry will be trying to catch up to.

{{try-flux-today}}

What Exactly is the Arduino Nano R4?

The Arduino Nano R4 is a significant upgrade to Arduino’s popular Nano line, powered by the Renesas RA4M1 microcontroller. Imagine taking the powerful brains of the Arduino UNO R4 and shrinking them into a tiny, versatile form. With a 48 MHz Arm Cortex-M4F core, 256 KB of flash storage, and integrated EEPROM, the Nano R4 provides remarkable performance in a miniature footprint.

Regardless of whether you're prototyping, building IoT projects, or designing space-conscious hardware, the Nano R4 is designed to streamline your workflow and empower your creativity.

{{underline}}

What's New in the Arduino Nano R4?

The Nano R4 offers  exciting new features, making it one of Arduino’s most attractive small boards ever released:

• Enhanced Processing Power: 48 MHz Arm Cortex-M4F MCU (Renesas RA4M1).
• Expanded Memory: 256 KB Flash, 32 KB SRAM, and 8 KB EEPROM.
• Compact & Production-Friendly: Single-sided component placement and castellated headers for easy PCB integration.
• Versatile Connectivity: USB-C, built-in 3.3V Qwiic I²C connector, additional 5V I²C compatibility, UART, SPI, PWM, DAC, and CAN bus support.
• Real-Time Clock (RTC): An integrated RTC with battery backup capability for accurate timekeeping.
• RGB LED Indicator: Onboard LED for debugging, feedback, or user-interface enhancements.

{{underline}}

Looking to Fast-Track Your Arduino Hardware Design?

Browse the shield templates below, each pre-aligned with headers, that let hardware engineers move from concept to working prototype in record time. Choose a template, customize it to your needs, and start building.

1. Arduino MKR Wifi Template
2. Arduino Nano 33 Template
3. Arduino MKR Zero Template
4. Arduino Nano RP2040 Template

{{upsell-project}}

{{underline}}

Can I run my UNO R4 Minima sketch on a Nano R4?

Arduino Nano R4 keeps the classic Nano pin layout, so headers, shields, and breadboard wiring stay the same. Yes, just remap the pin numbers to match the Nano R4 layout. The Nano breakout connectors pinout is shown below:

Analog (JP1)

Digital (JP2)

{{underline}}

Why Does the Nano R4 Matter to Makers?

✅ Compact Size, Big Performance

Nano R4 packs high-end functionality previously reserved for larger Arduino boards into a sleek, ultra-compact form factor. This allows makers to design more sophisticated, compact IoT and wearable projects without compromising power or features.

✅ Seamless Transition from UNO R4

Already using Arduino’s popular UNO R4 boards? The Nano R4 offers complete compatibility with UNO R4’s software ecosystem, meaning your existing libraries, sketches, and workflows transfer smoothly to your Nano-sized projects.

✅ Production Ready & Cost-Effective

The castellated headers and single-sided components ensure easy and cost-effective manufacturing—perfect for makers looking to transition prototypes into commercial products quickly and affordably.

✅ Improved Connectivity and Expansion

The integrated Qwiic connector and additional I²C lines allow effortless integration of sensors, displays, and other peripherals. Add the RTC and RGB LED, and you have a remarkably versatile board ready for endless applications.

{{underline}}

Who Is the Arduino Nano R4 Designed For?

The Nano R4 meets a variety of needs:

• Hobbyists & Students: Easy-to-use and powerful enough to handle beginner and advanced projects alike.
• Product Developers: Small, affordable, and production-ready for embedding into commercial hardware.
• Educators: Compact form factor and compatibility with Arduino IDE make it ideal for teaching embedded systems, robotics, and IoT concepts.

{{underline}}

How Does Nano R4 Compare to Previous Arduino Boards?

Compared to older Nano models (Nano Every or Nano 33), the Nano R4 offers substantial performance and memory improvements:

The Nano R4 brings many of the features previously only available in higher-end Arduino boards into a Nano-sized form factor.

{{underline}}

Why Should You Upgrade to the Arduino Nano R4?

If you're currently using older Nano boards or even an Arduino UNO, here are quick reasons to make the jump to Nano R4:

• Power & Performance: Significant upgrade with faster processing and more memory.
• Better Compatibility: Simplified transition from UNO-based projects.
• Lower Cost & Easier Manufacturing: Perfect for small-scale production or commercial projects.
• Versatile Applications: Suitable for IoT, robotics, wearables, automation, and more.
• Future-Proof: Modern features like USB-C, RTC, and expanded connectivity mean longer-lasting project relevance.

{{underline}}

Where Can You Get the Arduino Nano R4?

The Arduino Nano R4 is available in two variations:

• Without Headers: Ideal for embedding into custom PCB designs (around $12.10).
• With Pre-soldered Headers: Ready for quick prototyping and breadboarding (around $13.30).

Both versions are available directly from Arduino's online store and major electronics distributors.

{{underline}}

Ready to Start Your Nano R4 Project?

Arduino’s Nano R4 sets a new standard for compact, powerful, and production-friendly microcontroller boards. Whether you’re prototyping the next big IoT device or scaling your prototype for production, the Nano R4 offers the power and flexibility you need.

Visit our Featured Projects page to discover innovative Arduino builds and spark inspiration for your next big idea.

{{upsell-project}}

What Is the RP2350 A4 Stepping?

The RP2350 A4 stepping is the latest iteration of Raspberry Pi's powerful dual-core MCU, designed to correct significant hardware and security issues identified in earlier versions (particularly the A2 stepping). This update provides comprehensive improvements, delivering both enhanced security and optimized hardware performance, making it a must-have upgrade for serious developers and embedded systems designers alike.

If you're connecting the RP2350 to retro computing hardware, there's good news: after extensive testing, the RP2350 is now officially 5V tolerant!

{{underline}}

Can My Current Pico Projects Run on the New A4 Stepping?

Absolutely! Because A4 is a pin-compatible, drop-in replacement, your existing Pico designs work right away, often with nothing more than a rebuild on the latest SDK. Here are four examples you can migrate today:

1. Pico Smart Automation Controller – A DIY home-automation hub that enables intelligent control for sensors, relays, and devices.
2. Pico Macro Keyboard – A customizable USB HID keypad a.k.a macro pad built using the Raspberry Pi Pico 2.
3. Avocaudio – Tiny Community Audio Board – A tinyML board designed for extensive audio data collection across various tinyML applications.
4. Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Shield Template – A ready-made “shield” PCB that mirrors the exact footprint and pin order of the Pico 2, much like an Arduino shield.

{{upsell-project}}

{{underline}}

How Can I Tell If I Have the A2 or A4 Stepping?

You can identify the stepping version from the marking on the top surface of the chip, as illustrated below.

{{underline}}

Do Pinouts Change with the RP2350 A4 Stepping?

No, great news for hardware engineers! The pin configuration and layout of the RP2350 A4 stepping remain identical to earlier versions, making it a perfect drop-in replacement. You can upgrade existing hardware designs without any modifications to your PCB layouts.

Below, I've included a detailed pinout mapping for quick reference.

GPIO Pins

QSPI Pins

Crystal Oscillator Pins

Misc Pins

USB Pins

{{underline}}

What’s New in the RP2350 A4 Stepping?

This stepping addresses several critical issues and introduces highly requested features:

• GPIO Leakage Bug Fixed: Resolves the notorious RP2350 erratum 9, removing unwanted current leakage on GPIO pins. As a result, external resistors are no longer required to pull inputs low, though they may safely be retained in existing designs.
• Enhanced Security: Addresses boot ROM exploits, OTP corruption, glitch vulnerabilities, and provides hardened AES encryption for secure applications.
• Integrated Flash Versions: Introduction of RP2354A/B variants with built-in 2 MB flash, simplifying hardware design and lowering production complexity.
• Official 5V GPIO Tolerance: Easier interfacing with legacy and retro-computing hardware without needing additional level shifting.

{{underline}}

Why Does the A4 Stepping Matter to You?

• Goodbye GPIO Leakage. No more worrying about external workarounds, your designs become simpler, cheaper, and more reliable.
• Stronger Security from the Ground Up. Hardened security improvements protect your products from known vulnerabilities, ensuring safer deployments, particularly important in IoT, industrial, and sensitive embedded projects.
• Simplified Hardware Design. The RP2354 integrated-flash variant significantly reduces design complexity, saving PCB space and manufacturing costs.
• Wider Compatibility. Official support for 5 V GPIO levels unlocks compatibility with more devices, sensors, and legacy systems without extra complexity.

{{underline}}

Will the A2 stepping be discontinued?

Raspberry Pi already stopped manufacturing the A2 stepping, shifted all production exclusively to A4, and removed remaining A2 inventory from distribution channels. The A4 stepping is a direct, drop-in replacement for A2, so you shouldn't encounter any issues transitioning to the newer version.

{{underline}}

How Can You Upgrade to the RP2350 A4 Stepping?

Follow these simple steps to leverage the power of RP2350 A4 in your Raspberry Pi Pico projects:

1. Update your Pico SDK to version 2.1.0 or newer (recommended: 2.2.0).
2. Rebuild your firmware using the latest SDK to ensure compatibility and utilize new security features.
3. Switch to RP2350 A4 stepping hardware fully compatible with existing designs but with improved security and reliability.

{{underline}}

Availability and Pricing

• RP2350A/B A4 Stepping: Now widely available through official Raspberry Pi distributors.
• RP2354 Integrated Flash Variants: Available soon at around $1.30 to $1.40 per chip, simplifying your designs and saving costs.

{{underline}}

Final Thoughts

The RP2350 A4 stepping significantly upgrades the potential of Raspberry Pi Pico-based designs. Enhanced security, hardware reliability, simpler designs, and broad compatibility make this stepping a turning point for professional and hobbyist projects alike.

Explore our Featured Projects page to discover more Raspberry Pi projects and fresh ideas that will jump-start your next hardware prototype.

{{upsell-project}}