The Raspberry Pi Pico is a powerful microcontroller board, available for ~10$ here in Australia. The Pico is a tiny, fast, and versatile board built using RP2040, the flagship microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the UK. The Pi Pico can be programmed with Micropython or C and can be used for a number of hobby, home and industrial applications. Experienced users might want to take advantage of the Pi Pico’s rich peripheral set, including SPI, I2C, and eight Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support.
The Pi Pico is based on the RP2040 which features a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor with 264kB internal RAM and support for up to 16MB of off-chip flash. A wide range of flexible I/O options includes I2C, SPI, and – uniquely – Programmable I/O (PIO). These support endless possible applications for this small and affordable package. A newer version of the Raspberry Pi Pico called the Pi Pico W includes an onboard wireless chip. Raspberry Pi Pico W comes with a fully certified module on board featuring 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless LAN, making it the perfect solution for loT applications and projects requiring wireless communication.
Get started with Micropython on the Raspberry Pi is a freely downloadable book published by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Download the book, purchase a Pi Pico and explore the world of electronics while coding in Micropython. See pinout diagram for the Pi Pico W below.
We have also created a course at KidzCanCode on the Raspberry Pi Pico. This course links to all of the Raspberry Pi Pico tutorials that have been put together by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The course provides kids at CoderDojo Altona North easy access to the tutorials while working on class. Access the course through the following link, “Physical Computing with the Pi Pico – I“.
