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 champ. The new Raspberry Pi Pico, on the other hand, is like the CPU of a more complex machine. It can’t do much on its own but with a few add-ons you can control robots, lights and other DIY hacks.
Best? It only costs $ 4.
These things are not new. There are plenty of them Arduino microcontrollers out there for rapid prototyping, including Adafruit’s feather platform of shelves and accessories. However, this is a first for RaspPi and it is an interesting move, not only because it makes the competition with Arduino stronger, but because it also offers Raspberry Pi’s first attempt at making its own chips. The board uses Raspberry Pi’s new RP2040 chip, which consists of an Arm Cortex-M0 + processor with 264 KB internal RAM. It also supports Flash memory storage up to 16MB.
According to Raspberry Pi Craised Operating Officer James Adams, the company started work on its new chip in 2016. It runs on a 40nm process and has dual cores, which is not common in such a cheap board.
You program it in C and MicroPython and connect sensors and displays up to the small wires on the sides. It is powered from a USB port. You can’t really play Doom it (yet) but you can use it for electronics experiments and other prototyping activities that the Raspberry Pi is already famous for. And according to Adams, it could be the first in a new line of boards powered by Raspberry Pi’s proprietary silicon.
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