Raspberry Pi SC0917 Single Board Computers

This little board allows me to be able to communicate with various sensors utilising different communication protocols.It is working great with micro python and you can get pretty much all the information from its wide user communities. Also, the pre-soldered header pins allow easy testing of a wide range of sensors, switches, or displays with a breadboard before you build your circuit.An excellent product for its cost.

Raspberry Pi Pico Headered Pico

Bought this (along with a pair of headless ones) as it can slot straight into my breadboard. A bit stiff to get in mind, care is certainly required. This has turned out to be a great way of finding out about the Pico.So far I've got a DHT22 temp & humidity sensor interfaced with it (very stable readings - far better than the R-PiZero I'm using with half a dozen of them), that is used to drive a PWM PC fan at a speed related to temp read by the DHT22. I've added a tiny LCD 128x64 (a somewhat cramped 16 x 8 chr but it works great!) screen to show what temp and duty cycle are being read & set, oh, and just for good measure I've a photo transistor on an ADC input to read the ambient light level and set the duration of a flash of the Pico onboard LED (my prog cycles ... MoreBought this (along with a pair of headless ones) as it can slot straight into my breadboard. A bit stiff to get in mind, care is certainly required. This has turned out to be a great way of finding out about the Pico.So far I've got a DHT22 temp & humidity sensor interfaced with it (very stable readings - far better than the R-PiZero I'm using with half a dozen of them), that is used to drive a PWM PC fan at a speed related to temp read by the DHT22. I've added a tiny LCD 128x64 (a somewhat cramped 16 x 8 chr but it works great!) screen to show what temp and duty cycle are being read & set, oh, and just for good measure I've a photo transistor on an ADC input to read the ambient light level and set the duration of a flash of the Pico onboard LED (my prog cycles every 2 sec, the flash duration - 'brightness', is controlled by the amount of light picked up by the photo transistor (and the Opto-Tr ADC voltage is also displayed on the LCD) - oh yeh, and using the Opto-Tr ADC value the LCD brightness is dimmed if the surroundings are dark.I've yet to see if I can interface my old Scroll Phat HD 7x17 LED display but info I've found about that is, so far, a little more vague.Once I've finished leaning I'll commit one of the headless Pico's to the final fan/ventilation project.Great fun... My project I have in mind is to fit a set of 4 fans in the skylight of my campa and vary the speed fresh air is blown into the campa to cool it on a hot night. I think I've cracked it, although I'm temped to add a second DHT22 to compare outside temperature and have that added to the calculation for fan speed (wouldn't want to be blowing hotter air inside now would I! On the other hand, if the outside air is lower in humidity than the inside.....

Raspberry Pi Pico Pico

Well this is an interesting board. The best way I can describe the Pico is that it is a stripped down bare bones Pi Zero that's then been stripped back some more. Yes, that means you lose a lot (no WiFi, limited storage, blah blah) but you gain incredibly too: the cost is peanuts, the ability to immediately start working with no boot time is great, and best of all is battery life. I plugged in the Pico to Pimoroni's RGB Keypad Base and connected it to one of those cheap free USB battery packs you pick up at conferences. You know the type: free because you're not even going to get one charge of your mobile from it. The Pico ran, flashing lights on the Keypad Base for over 36 hours. I figure that connecting it up to something with a bit more juice and it'll give a ... MoreWell this is an interesting board. The best way I can describe the Pico is that it is a stripped down bare bones Pi Zero that's then been stripped back some more. Yes, that means you lose a lot (no WiFi, limited storage, blah blah) but you gain incredibly too: the cost is peanuts, the ability to immediately start working with no boot time is great, and best of all is battery life. I plugged in the Pico to Pimoroni's RGB Keypad Base and connected it to one of those cheap free USB battery packs you pick up at conferences. You know the type: free because you're not even going to get one charge of your mobile from it. The Pico ran, flashing lights on the Keypad Base for over 36 hours. I figure that connecting it up to something with a bit more juice and it'll give a nuclear fusion reactor a good run for its money. Well, maybe not, but at this price point it matters little.Connecting the Pico up to Thonny on my Pi 4 for programming was a doddle. Well, when using the right USB cable it was. Curiously I've also cable that will provide power but no data connection to the Pi. Hence, if you connect it up and can't program in the Thonny IDE try another cable. Like me, you probably have dozens of the silly things lying around.Absolutely splendiferous.

Raspberry Pi Pico Pico

A truly amazing little thing - so much power in such a tiny package.Basic GPIO is a breeze - with plenty of examples out there, in a couple of days I was able to interface hall effect, opto sensors and even drive stepper motors via a tmc2209 module. I also bought a Pi W - and within a couple of hours had it running a Webserver so I could remotely control and monitor my devices from anywhere.The PIO functionality is challenging and exciting to explore - only 9 instructions to play with - but you have to get creative when the instruction set doesn't even let you add or subtract - let alone multiply or divide!I didn't have a lot of luck with the C toolchain (on Windows) .. I caved and switch to Python - and that experience is a lot less painful, with Thonny ... MoreA truly amazing little thing - so much power in such a tiny package.Basic GPIO is a breeze - with plenty of examples out there, in a couple of days I was able to interface hall effect, opto sensors and even drive stepper motors via a tmc2209 module. I also bought a Pi W - and within a couple of hours had it running a Webserver so I could remotely control and monitor my devices from anywhere.The PIO functionality is challenging and exciting to explore - only 9 instructions to play with - but you have to get creative when the instruction set doesn't even let you add or subtract - let alone multiply or divide!I didn't have a lot of luck with the C toolchain (on Windows) .. I caved and switch to Python - and that experience is a lot less painful, with Thonny working well.Using IRQ's and PIO - your main loop is free to do all sorts of good things - AND you have two cores (and multi-threading is EASY) ... run a webserver on one - and you have one free to bang bits (if you must).35 years of programming experience in a dozen different languages probably helps a little bit - but really - anyone can build exciting projects with some copy-and-paste action. The possibilities are endless.

Raspberry Pi Pico Pico

Awesome microcontroller for the price, sometimes all you want to do is run IO and algorithms without necessarily booting up a Raspberry PI or you want to make a component and have it run smoothly all the time from the moment you power on the PI.Runs micropython and has two core threads which means you can run 2 multi threads on your code.Plenty of of GPIO and low power consumption so basically you can run it with a couple of AA batteries.To run the python code directly from power on, save the file as main.py into the controller and you’re good to go.

Raspberry Pi Pico With Headers

Brilliant product , arrived well packaged and in excellent condition.Using this as a fightboard to power a custom arcade stick.Loaded the firmware easily and put it in a nice 3d printed case I'd built.Then attached the connecting DuPont wires to the Pico and everything worked right away (to my disbelief!)100% would buy from pi hut again and thoroughly recommend this product.

Raspberry Pi Pico Without Headers

Two or so months ago, I was full of enthusiasm for the RP2040. I mean, just look at what you get for the low cost!Unfortunately the old clique chimes in - If it looks too good to be true...Well, that might not be entirely fair. As a simple, general-purpose micro, the RP2040 is worth considering and the Pico board makes an excellent, low-cost way to get started.And that's where low cost stops.Raspberry Pi seem to think it is acceptable for people to spend days and days getting flakey toolchains in place. Time is the most expensive commodity we tend to deal with so I would prefer to pay a bit more to get the tools in place and reliably running straight away. Specifically for C/C++ embedded development NOT Python.I get the feeling that Raspberry Pi are guilty ... MoreTwo or so months ago, I was full of enthusiasm for the RP2040. I mean, just look at what you get for the low cost!Unfortunately the old clique chimes in - If it looks too good to be true...Well, that might not be entirely fair. As a simple, general-purpose micro, the RP2040 is worth considering and the Pico board makes an excellent, low-cost way to get started.And that's where low cost stops.Raspberry Pi seem to think it is acceptable for people to spend days and days getting flakey toolchains in place. Time is the most expensive commodity we tend to deal with so I would prefer to pay a bit more to get the tools in place and reliably running straight away. Specifically for C/C++ embedded development NOT Python.I get the feeling that Raspberry Pi are guilty of hanging to their Hobbyist label with their inane love of CLI's and Python. What a shame as the RP2040 was a great opportunity to go mainstream, but I am one who has been put off. I strongly suspect I am not alone as many, like me, hate having their time wasted on sub-standard offerings.The RP2040 isn't as cheap as it looks as it needs external memory and Chrystal (don't even consider the internal RC osc as it's a joke which, in today's market, is unforgivable)My patience has run dry.I would have rated only one star, but this is meant to be a review on the Pi Pico! Ok, that isn't bad. The biggest weakness is that the SWD debug signals aren't routed to a connector and getting debug up and running is an utter joke (see attach pic; who would consider that an acceptable debug solution?). If it wasn't for this failure it would have been four stars.

Raspberry Pi Pico Without Headers

The Pico is a great little microprocessor that can substitute for an Arduino Uno. If you have knowledge of the Arduino IDE and existing sketches, you don't need to rewrite the code in Python; the Pico can run the sketch "as is". You will of course need to use the Pico's GPIO pins which are mostly the same numbering as for the Arduino, and maybe do a little soldering, but that's the fun in making things. If your project doesn't require WiFi connectivity, the plain Pico is ideal, and at 3.90GBP a real bargain. Use your Arduino for testing your project; then replace it with a Pico and just let it run every time you power up. Many thanks to the PiHut Team for a fast and reliable service, as usual.

Raspberry Pi Pico Without Headers

Readers of Practical Electronics magazine in the UK or Silicon Chip magazine in Australia and New Zealand with be very familiar with the Micromite and the numerous projects that use it. For those not familiar with the Micromite it is a single-board computer that uses the Basic programming language and has built-in support for colour touch screens and many different types of modules. A quick Google search will offer much more detail.Recently, the Micromite system has been ported to the Raspberry Pi Pico and is called PicoMite. The PicoMite is many times more powerful than the Micromite and with many more features. It takes seconds to set up and is ready ‘out-of-the-box’! No messing about with libraries to use colour touch screens, real-time clocks, temperature ... MoreReaders of Practical Electronics magazine in the UK or Silicon Chip magazine in Australia and New Zealand with be very familiar with the Micromite and the numerous projects that use it. For those not familiar with the Micromite it is a single-board computer that uses the Basic programming language and has built-in support for colour touch screens and many different types of modules. A quick Google search will offer much more detail.Recently, the Micromite system has been ported to the Raspberry Pi Pico and is called PicoMite. The PicoMite is many times more powerful than the Micromite and with many more features. It takes seconds to set up and is ready ‘out-of-the-box’! No messing about with libraries to use colour touch screens, real-time clocks, temperature sensors, SD cards etc. – it’s all built-in.The Raspberry Pi Pico is a lot cheaper than a Micromite system and given its extra features and performance is a ‘no-brainer’ for all existing and future Micromite / PicoMite projects.

Raspberry Pi Pico Without Headers

Amazing, amazing, amazing piece of kit. If it's physical stuff you're into, the pico is incredible. Almost instant startup times, solid PWM output, ADC, as well as I2C, UART etc for the high tech add-ons, pico's got it all. And soooo cheap it's unbelievable. Flexible power options as well. I'm a huge fan, I love it. With Kitronik's Simply Servos or Robotics boards you can keep things really neat. Only downside is lack of built-in wireless, but that's just been added with the Pico W.