This January we saw the launch of the new Raspberry Pi Pico featuring the company’s RP2040 chip. The board has gained an immense amount of recognition and community support in the past 2 months. Additionally, it is the company’s first cost-effective board available at only $4 USD. One of the main reasons for its success is the powerful RP2040 chip that makes it dynamic for a wide range of applications when compared to its competitors.
Discussing further, the RP2040 SoC comes with dual Arm Cortex-M0+ processors that work at a frequency of 133 MHz, hence making it faster than its competing chips. Hence, the chip can also support edge AI due to its maximum performance at very low power. Additionally, the processor comes with 264KB internal RAM and up to 16MB of off-chip Flash. It also supports I2C, SPI, and programmable I/O that allows flexible connectivity and interfacing options.
Raspberry Pi Pico is the breakout board for the RP2040 chip built on the silicon package, hence making it a low-cost device. The board features a castellated module which provides the option of soldering it to carrier boards and the board can be used as a separate component for various applications. It has a USB 1.1 port and an option of host support allowing an efficient performance. Additionally, it has 26 multi-function GPIO pins and 8 Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for application-specific peripheral support.
Raspberry Pi Pico’s RP2040 SoC
The board also comes with an on-device timer and clock along with a temperature sensor. Raspberry Pi Pico dedicated to ultra low power applications supports low-power sleep and dormant modes. Talking about the software aspect the board supports drag-and-drop programming using mass storage over a USB. The Raspberry Pico is officially programmable in C and MicroPython but, it also supports other languages.
The Raspberry Pi Pico is available for $4 USD on its official product page. However, you can find the board for sale on many platforms because of its popularity. For more information visit the product page of Raspberry Pi Pico. Images and technical specifications have also been taken from the product page.
Saumitra Jagdale is a Backend Developer, Freelance Technical Author, Global AI Ambassador (SwissCognitive), Open-source Contributor in Python projects, Leader of Tensorflow Community India and Passionate AI/ML Enthusiast
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