Raspberry Pi Pico costs 4 euros and uses its own chip design
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With the Pico, the Raspberry Pi Foundation now offers a tiny microcontroller board for those for whom a normal Raspberry Pi is too big, too expensive or too energy-hungry.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is now also entering the microcontroller market. The non-profit hardware builder developed the underlying chip called RP2040 himself. “It seems like every fruit company these days makes their own silicone, and we’re no exception,” explains Raspberry Pi COO James Adams, referring to Apple’s M1 chip.
The RP2040 is based on a dual-core Cortex-M0-Plus CPU from ARM, which is clocked at 133 megahertz. The chip also contains 265 kilobytes of RAM. To connect with its environment, the RP2040 has 30 general-purpose input and output pins, four of which can be used as analog inputs. There is also a USB 1.1 controller with host and device support.
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Raspberry Pi Pico can be programmed in C or Python
A GCC-based toolchain and support for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code are available for programming the microcontroller board. Alternatively, there is also a port from MicroPython for the Pico. The entry-level IDE can also be used to work with the Python compiler, which is specialized in microcontrollers Thonny be used.
The Raspberry Pi Pico can be pre-ordered now. The price is around four euros including VAT. The microcontroller board is also included in the latest edition of the English-language magazine Hackspace, which is published by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Adafruit, Arduino, Sparkfun: Others are also using the new RP2040 chip
Not only the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself, but also other manufacturers will bring out microcontroller boards based on the RP2040. For example, a Arduino Nano which has, among other things, WiFi and Bluetooth as well as several sensors on board.
Manufacturer Adafruit, in turn, is using the Feather RP 2040 and the Itsy Bitsy RP 2040 Bring two boards based on the Raspberry Pi chip onto the market. Also Sparkfun relies on the RP2040 and will publish three products based on the chip.
In addition, the British company Pimoroni will use the Pico system bring a pico-based gaming system to market. There is also with Pico Explorer Base a special experiment breadboard with an integrated display, loudspeaker and buttons.
Also interesting: 30 incredible Raspberry Pi projects
