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InfoQ Homepage News New Raspberry Pico Micro-Controller Brings Versatility and Small Size Factor

New Raspberry Pico Micro-Controller Brings Versatility and Small Size Factor

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The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released the Raspberry Pi Pico, a small (21mm x 51mm), inexpensive ($4) micro-controller board based on a custom-designed RP2040 chip. The Pico can be programmed in C and MicroPython via USB. The RP2040 has two ARM cores clocking at 133MHz, 264KB internal SRAM, and 2MB QSPI Flash to connect external memories. The Pico enables a large range of applications by providing a wide range of flexible I/O options (I2C, SPI, PWM, 8 Programmable I/O state machines for custom peripheral support).

The Raspberry PI foundation described the new Pico as follows:

Raspberry Pi Pico is a tiny, fast, and versatile board built using RP2040, a brand new microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the UK.

The Pico deserves its name with its dimensions being 21mm x 51mm. The Pico, at $4, aims to be an affordable package that can support a large range of applications. The micro-controller RP2040 features a dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, with a clock that can reach up to 133 MHz.

The versatility of the board is achieved with a large range of I/O options. The Pico exposes 26 of the 30 possible RP2040’s GPIO pins. GPIO0 to GPIO22 are digital-only. GPIO 26-28 are able to be used either as digital GPIO or as ADC inputs. The RP2040 features two UARTs, two SPI controllers, two I2C controllers, 16 PWM channels, one USB 1.1 controller, and 8 Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines.

The large range of support of communication protocols allows interfacing the Pico with plenty of available sensors and actuators. SPI is, for instance, commonly used by RFID card reader modules or 2.4 GHz wireless transmitter/receivers. I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit communications) can be used by temperature sensors, accelerometers, magnetometers, and more. PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) can be used to control analog devices such as servomotors. The programmable state machines go a step further by allowing the implementation of custom communication protocols without involving the CPU.

The importance of versatility in Pico’s design as a differential point in the Pi’s product line is further reinforced by James Adams:

Many of our favorite projects […] connect Raspberry Pi to the physical world: software running on the Raspberry Pi reads sensors, performs computations, talks to the network, and drives actuators. […]
But there are limits: even in its lowest power mode a Raspberry Pi Zero will consume on the order of 100 milliwatts; Raspberry Pi on its own does not support analog input; and while it is possible to run “bare metal” software on a Raspberry Pi, software running under a general-purpose operating system like Linux is not well suited to low-latency control of individual I/O pins.

Reprogramming the Pico Flash can be done using a USB. Dragging a special .uf2 file onto the disk will write this file to the Flash and restart the Pico. Code may be executed directly from external memory through a dedicated SPI, DSPI, or QSPI interface. A small cache improves performance for typical applications. The Serial Wire Debug (SWD) port can be used to interactively debug code running on the RP2040.

The Pico can be programmed in C or MicroPython (written in C99). The Raspberry PI foundation provides a C/C++ SDK and an official MicroPython port. The Pico embeds additionally an on-chip clock, temperature sensor, and a single LED.

The versatility, size, and inexpensive profile of the Pico may make it attractive for embedded IoT applications. Tomas Morava, founder of the Hardwario IoT device manufacturer, previously provided actual examples of inexpensive computing devices used for industrial IoT applications. Peter Hoodie, co-founder of Moddable, which focuses on applications leveraging low-cost micro-controllers, explained in an interview with InfoQ:

Our focus on low-end microcontrollers is one example of focus on the product owner. We want to see great software – secure, reliable, easy-to-use software – on every device. That isn’t going to happen if the product requires a hundred dollars worth of hardware to run the software.

Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries.

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