Review Raspberry Pi Pico Review: ‘Pi Silicon’ Debuts on $4 Microcontroller

[Admin]

In a break from the norm, the latest Raspberry Pi is a $4 microcontroller featuring the first ‘Pi Silicon’ created by Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi Pico Review: ‘Pi Silicon’ Debuts on $4 Microcontroller : Read more

 

[Findecanor]

There are/will be boards with the RP2040 chip also in the form factors of Pro Micro, Feather/Thing, ItsyBitsy and Arduino Nano, with different capabilities.

The RPi Micro is the cheapest though, with "only" 2MB flash but the most GPIO pins.
The Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board seems to become the most expensive, with 16MB flash, a nRF radio module and an accelerometer.

 

[Koen1982]

Doesn't seem that special, and the idea from their PIO block seems copied from XMOS

 

[Flemkopf]

Doesn't seem that special, and the idea from their PIO block seems copied from XMOS

Cypress Semiconductor has a similar capability with their PSoCs as well. Given that, the Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms have never succeeded based on novel capabilities. They've succeeded because they are cheap, accessible, and they work well enough to get people excited. If they can make the PIO block easy to use, and keep the responsiveness in the sub microsecond range without requiring the user to muck around with interrupts I can see a couple of my own use cases for it.

 

[mcgge1360]

There are/will be boards with the RP2040 chip also in the form factors of Pro Micro, Feather/Thing, ItsyBitsy and Arduino Nano, with different capabilities.

The RPi Micro is the cheapest though, with "only" 2MB flash but the most GPIO pins.
The Arduino Nano board seems to become the most expensive, with 16MB flash, a nRF radio module and an accelerometer.

Wait what? Am I just dumb or doesn't the Arduino Nano have like 32KB flash, not 16MB? And accelerometer? In a nano?

 

[Len2021]

Doesn't seem that special, and the idea from their PIO block seems copied from XMOS

The bus fabric allowing full speed from both micros and devices is what I saw as unusual and noteworthy. This is not a device for the arduino user, but someone who needs fast real time processing. PlatformIO will probably be the development environment of choice. Even though the core is M0, they added hardware multiply and divide which is very nice too.

 

[Findecanor]

Wait what? Am I just dumb or doesn't the Arduino Nano have like 32KB flash, not 16MB? And accelerometer? In a nano?

The original with ATmega328 has 32KB flash. The new "Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect" will have 16 MB.
(If you read from the forums, my post contained links)

 

[OttovanZanten]

'(I’m not aware of other dual core microcontrollers at this price point)'

You've never heard of the ESP32? It's been around for a while, Dual Core and even faster than the Pico. And a third of the price.

 

[martinmarty]

In a break from the norm, the latest Raspberry Pi is a $4 microcontroller featuring the first ‘Pi Silicon’ created by Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi Pico Review: ‘Pi Silicon’ Debuts on $4 Microcontroller : Read more

What/where is the "Getting started with Raspberry Pi Pico" that (chapter 6) is referred to in the article? I have located one book and several other documents on this topic but they all seem to be concerned with python rather than C. Thank you.