The Raspberry Pi is one of the smallest and cheapest minicomputers you can buy. It has an HDMI port, USB ports and runs Ubuntu or other open source operating systems like a champion. The new Raspberry Pi Pico, on the other hand, is like the CPU of a more complex machine. By itself, it cannot do much, but with some add-ons, you can control robots, lights and other DIY hacks.
The best thing? It only costs $ 4.
These things are not new. There are many Arduino microcontrollers for rapid prototyping, including Adafruit’s Pity platform of plates and accessories. This is the first time for the RaspPi, however, and it is an interesting move, not only because it puts you more firmly in competition with the Arduino, but because it also features the Raspberry Pi’s first foray into making its own chips. The card uses the new Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip, which consists of an Arm Cortex-M0 + processor with 264 KB of internal RAM. It also supports Flash memory storage of up to 16 MB.
According to Raspberry Pi CHief Operating Oofficial James Adams, the company started working on its new chip in 2016. It works on a 40 nm process and has two cores, which is not common in such a cheap board.
You program it in C and MicroPython and connect sensors and monitors to the small terminals on the sides. It is powered by a USB port. You can’t really play Doom on it (yet), but you can use it for electronic experiments and other prototyping activities for which the Raspberry Pi is already famous. And according to Adams, may be the first in a new line of plates powered by the Raspberry Pi’s own silicon.
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