Raspberry Pi Pico

This is the best microcontroller I have ever tested. It has a very low price, 264KB of RAM, which is a lot if you compare it to other microcontrollers. It is also very beginner-friendly because it has a big community. It can also be used as a human interface device (HID) which is my favorite feature, You can make a keyboard, mouse, a game controller and much more. I have made an rgb lamp with it and I'm currently making an analog USB handbrake.

Look, the purpose of these kinds of boards is easy prototyping for the MCU on them. The idea is that if you come up with something good you can order the chips and use them to make actual devices that you can sell.The Pico has some of its features spread among other chips on the board, has some features that make no sense for an MCU (dual core? really?) and where the hell are you supposed to get an RP2040 that's not mounted to a Pico board?Setting up the dev environment for the Pico is also ridiculous. Arduino IDE is the industry standard for this, but Pico decided to use an extremely awkward and obnoxiously invasive (setting environment variables is no longer acceptable) custom setup instead. WHY? The "hold button while plugging in" bootload thing is obnoxious ... MoreLook, the purpose of these kinds of boards is easy prototyping for the MCU on them. The idea is that if you come up with something good you can order the chips and use them to make actual devices that you can sell.The Pico has some of its features spread among other chips on the board, has some features that make no sense for an MCU (dual core? really?) and where the hell are you supposed to get an RP2040 that's not mounted to a Pico board?Setting up the dev environment for the Pico is also ridiculous. Arduino IDE is the industry standard for this, but Pico decided to use an extremely awkward and obnoxiously invasive (setting environment variables is no longer acceptable) custom setup instead. WHY? The "hold button while plugging in" bootload thing is obnoxious as well. Most eval boards either use a baud-change signal from the USB to trigger the bootloader or else just have a reset button that triggers it and lets it time out if there's no load comms from the USB.--tl;dr - RPi foundation missed the whole point of the market it's attempting to enter. $4 is cheaper than a $10 Uno, but the Uno has a real-world chip and development is plug-and-play, with support for a huge range of libraries.

Raspberry Pi Pico 10 x Pico

Much as I loved the original Pi, then the Pi Zero even more, the Pico is for me the truest form of Raspberry Pi. No SD cards, just compile / drag to flash / start running. 10-20x the performance of the Inmos Transputers I cut my teeth on, and under £4. Absolutely brilliant. And without the Pico, I would have never realized how many bats hang out in my garden at night, and the Pico has allowed me to add HUGE value to the Bats in Churches surveys I have done this year. Truly a game-changing device for anyone wishing to dabble in electronics design.

Raspberry Pi Pico 10 x Pico

Fantastic value :-) Never buy a single one, you ALWAYS are going to need two, just incase you accidentally blow one up. Whilst you're buying two, a 3rd is always handy to keep around. But, you might lose that 3rd somewhere, and what if an urgent project comes up? , a 4th is a suberb 'backup. I'm always losing things, so figured 10's a sweet spot. I've , err, lost 5 of them already somewhere though ;-)Great service from you guys as always, Thankyou!

Raspberry Pi Pico 5 x Pico

Got a pack of 5, not because I'm greedy, but it's just easier to keep a separate one for each experiment at the price. Micropython had to go on one, of course. It's nice to see lots of free memory compared with other platforms - the python editor, pye, can actually manage to edit itself. I did get occasional lockups, though, maybe there is an issue as you get nearer the memory capacity. I put PicoVGA on another - it's quite amazing to see such graphics out of a little microcontroller. Been busy with other things lately, but there's still plenty to keep me amused when I get back to them.

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

I bought the Pico to complement a Pi0W to drive dc motors with encoders. By itself the Pi0W could not consistently give shaft speed because Linux would interrupt at random. So Pico instead of an Arduino as a trial. Much of the Pico is worthwhile, eg the ADCs and MicroPython. But some is poor, especially the BOOTSEL button. You need 3 hands to use it, and the button is fragile. Mine broke, so I had to solder a Captain Resetti to TP6. It would have been MUCH easier if the bootsel had just been “Press for 3 seconds” without the USB plug in complexity. I also find that the GPIOs are fragile, say compared with Arduino and the IRQ is massively sensitive to dc motor EMI. This meant I had to add many more decoupling caps. Finally I think it would have been better for ... MoreI bought the Pico to complement a Pi0W to drive dc motors with encoders. By itself the Pi0W could not consistently give shaft speed because Linux would interrupt at random. So Pico instead of an Arduino as a trial. Much of the Pico is worthwhile, eg the ADCs and MicroPython. But some is poor, especially the BOOTSEL button. You need 3 hands to use it, and the button is fragile. Mine broke, so I had to solder a Captain Resetti to TP6. It would have been MUCH easier if the bootsel had just been “Press for 3 seconds” without the USB plug in complexity. I also find that the GPIOs are fragile, say compared with Arduino and the IRQ is massively sensitive to dc motor EMI. This meant I had to add many more decoupling caps. Finally I think it would have been better for prototyping if the GPIOs had all been along one edge as in the Pi0W.

Raspberry Pi Pico Pico

Well up to now Raspberry Pi boards were single board computers running Linux. The new kid on the block goes head to head with existing microcontroller boards that do not have an operating system and mainly use the Arduino framework. They have gone for an inhouse RP2040 chip, which you can programme using Micropython, rather than using the existing STM32 or ESP32 chips . Plenty of documentation covering the chip and board and I believe more so than that covering the STM32 and ESP32. I think the Raspberry Pi Foundation give great support to their products. I guess the Pi Pico has nothing new over existing microcontroller boards. In some aspects it less powerful e.g. floating point arithmetic but it draws less current in use which is better for battery powered ... MoreWell up to now Raspberry Pi boards were single board computers running Linux. The new kid on the block goes head to head with existing microcontroller boards that do not have an operating system and mainly use the Arduino framework. They have gone for an inhouse RP2040 chip, which you can programme using Micropython, rather than using the existing STM32 or ESP32 chips . Plenty of documentation covering the chip and board and I believe more so than that covering the STM32 and ESP32. I think the Raspberry Pi Foundation give great support to their products. I guess the Pi Pico has nothing new over existing microcontroller boards. In some aspects it less powerful e.g. floating point arithmetic but it draws less current in use which is better for battery powered projects. Like all existing microcontrollers, you select the one that suits the application and we now have more choice.

Raspberry Pi Pico Pico

Both boards work great now? I had an issue with the usb connection cable! The first cable I tried didn't allow the PICO to be detected as a usb device on my RPi4...hummm. Tried the same cable on my ms windows 10 desktop surprise surprise IT WORK OK, registered the PICO as a usb device, opened up windows explorer and showed the two files loaded on the PICOs! Tried it again on my RPi4 dead. Tried a different usb cable... SUCCESS great, registered as usb device, two files load, both PICO working on RPi4.

Rasperry Pi Pico Review

Hello there!First off, I just wanted to thank customer service so much for helping me out with some issues I've had with a dead board. Overall very impressed with the response times and how much of a help they were! Anyways, getting on with the review of the product.The Raspberry Pi Pico is singlehandedly the most interesting piece of technology I think I have ever handled. But it makes good for controller mods. I have had a fun time figuring out what did what, getting LEDs to pop up whenever I pressed a button and etc.Other than that, I am very impressed overall with Customer Service and the piece of technology itself.