Carrier board
The carrier is a second board included in the PiBody kit. It exposes the
same A–H slots and runs the same pibody library as the full
PiBody device, but it is stripped down for building a finished
project into a compact case:
- All eight ports A–H via JST — every port is a keyed JST connector, including A–F (on PiBody, A–F are magnetic).
- No display, no GP20/GP21 buttons — those are PiBody-only.
- No enclosure — it is a bare board you integrate into your own build.
- Swappable Pico W — like PiBody, the Pico plugs in and can be replaced.
It still keeps the essentials for a running build: a RESET button, an
on/off slide switch, a battery JST connector, and a servo header
(the S / + / − pins for positions 8, 9, 12). Like PiBody, it also breaks out
every Pico GPIO and power pin to a row of holes beside the Pico, so any pin
can be wired directly (see Ports & GPIO).
The workflow is: prototype on PiBody (snap modules on with magnets, use the display and buttons to test), then move the same modules to the carrier and wire everything through JST to assemble a compact, permanent project.
Slots A–H
The carrier carries the same eight general-purpose slots, A through H, with the same GPIO mapping as PiBody. Each carries two signal lines; what a slot can do depends on which GPIO pins it is wired to (see Ports & GPIO for the exact mapping):
| Capability | Slots | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Digital in/out, PWM | A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H | every slot has digital-capable pins |
| Analog input (ADC) | C, F only | only these slots reach the RP2040 ADC pins |
| Two analog lines (Joystick) | F only | F exposes two ADC lines simultaneously |
| I²C bus | any except C | C's second line is shared with the ADC mux |
| NeoPixel (LED Tower) | G, H or positions 8, 9 |
Fixed positions
Beyond the A–H slots, the board has dedicated positions for servos and the LED Tower:
- Servo positions 8, 9, 12 — a servo is created by its numeric position,
e.g.
Servo(8), not by a letter slot. The LED Tower can also use positions 8, 9 (or slots G, H).
The display and GP20/GP21 buttons are part of the PiBody device only and are not present on the carrier — see PiBody and built-in components.
Choosing a slot in code
The code is identical on either board — you pass the slot the module is plugged into:
from pibody import LED, LightSensor
led = LED("A") # any digital slot
light = LightSensor("C") # ADC slot only (C or F)
If a module needs a capability a slot cannot provide (e.g. analog on a non-ADC slot), it will not work correctly. Match the module to a valid slot from the table above — each module page lists its valid ports.