Raspberry Pi Pico W Launches For $6
The Raspberry Pi Pico W is an update to last year's Raspberry Pi Pico using their in-house RP2040 silicon. The Pico W is a small update to this IoT platform that has already sold more than two million boards.
With the Raspberry Pi Pico W, there is now 802.11n wireless networking added to the Pico platform to make it more attractive for IoT use-cases. The Pico W retains pin compatibility with the original Pico. The Pico W makes use of an Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip.
Aside from the addition of 802.11n wireless networking, the Pico W is the same platform as the Pico. Rather than $4, this 802.11n WiFi variant will sell for $6 USD.
Also launching are two versions with pre-soldered headers:
Pico H ($5) and Pico WH ($7) add pre-populated headers, and our new 3-pin debug connector, to Pico and Pico W respectively. Pico H and Pico W are available today; Pico WH will follow in August.
[...] Eagle-eyed readers of datasheets will notice that CYW43439 supports both Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low-Energy: we have not enabled Bluetooth on Pico W at launch, but may do so in the future.
Previously: Raspberry Pi Releases "Pico" Microcontroller at $4 Per Unit
Raspberry Pi Begins Selling its RP2040 Microcontroller for $1
Related Stories
The Raspberry Pi Foundation's first microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico is now on sale at $4. Raspberry Pi is normally associated with single board microcomputers. This microcontroller uses the RP2040 dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ chip. The board has support for C, C++, and microPython.
We had three principal design goals for RP2040: high performance, particularly for integer workloads; flexible I/O, to allow us to talk to almost any external device; and of course, low cost, to eliminate barriers to entry. We ended up with an incredibly powerful little chip, cramming all this into a 7 × 7 mm QFN-56 package containing just two square millimetres of 40 nm silicon. RP2040 has:
- Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ @ 133MHz
- 264KB (remember kilobytes?[*]) of on-chip RAM
- Support for up to 16MB of off-chip Flash memory via dedicated QSPI bus
- DMA controller
- Interpolator and integer divider peripherals
- 30 GPIO pins, 4 of which can be used as analogue inputs
- 2 × UARTs, 2 × SPI controllers, and 2 × I2C controllers
- 16 × PWM channels
- 1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support
- 8 × Raspberry Pi Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines
- USB mass-storage boot mode with UF2 support, for drag-and-drop programming
And this isn't just a powerful chip: it's designed to help you bring every last drop of that power to bear. With six independent banks of RAM, and a fully connected switch at the heart of its bus fabric, you can easily arrange for the cores and DMA engines to run in parallel without contention.
[*] By comparison, the Apple II computer (introduced in June 1977) had: 4-48 KiB of RAM, a 6502 processor (running at 1 MHz), and an Introductory price of US$1,298 (equivalent to $5,476 in 2019).
Additional coverage:
Raspberry Pi Announces RP2040 Chips For $1
Earlier this year the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico with RP2040 microcontroller for doing embedded development. Now that RP2040 chip is being sold for just $1 USD via their resellers for those wanting to build their own electronics with this Raspberry Pi silicon.
[...] The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced they have shipped over 600k Raspberry Pi Pico boards this year and orders for another 700k. More creators and other businesses meanwhile have been seeking to build out their own wares using the RP2040 chip, which has now led the group to offering the chip for $1 USD in single-unit sales. By this autumn they expect "serious volume" of the RP2040 chips for those looking to build out their own wares with this tasty silicon.
Raspberry Silicon update: RP2040 on sale now at $1
Also at CNX Software. Alasdair Allan says:
Today's announcement is for single unit quantity only. We're still figuring out what reel-scale pricing will look like in the autumn, but we expect it to be significantly lower than that.
Previously: Raspberry Pi Releases "Pico" Microcontroller at $4 Per Unit
Raspberry Pi Users Mortified as Microsoft Repository that Phones Home is Added to Pi OS
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 01 2022, @02:27AM
I may just pivot my Particle-Argon development to a Raspberry Pico W instead... hopefully it is competitive on the power draw front, I'm trying to maintain a (very low usage) wifi connected webserver on 50 watt-hours per day or less.
Technical question for those who know: Is it really required for all BLE devices to have agonizingly long connect times? I understand that they only "listen" at intervals to conserve energy, but it seems like the user experience of every BLE widget I have encountered starts with an excruciatingly long (sometimes 90 seconds or more) delay followed by an uncertain / unreliable and remarkably slow connection, and usually some buggy software to go along with it. My latest disappointment is this thing: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Melnor-4-Zone-Bluetooth-Water-Timer-93280/315869270 [homedepot.com] which seems to lack effective checksums on its communication. You can spend 5 minutes programming each channel, and once in a random while the program for one of the channels will overwrite itself on another channel - even a channel you haven't touched. Then the plants that depend on that water start to wilt a few days later...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Friday July 01 2022, @06:19AM (3 children)
But how long 'til it is available? And I don't mean from scalpers charging 100 bucks a piece.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 01 2022, @11:55AM (2 children)
Speculation and promises are near meaningless, try the "Notify me when available" button on many of the reputable zero markup distributors.
Expect to pay shipping on a single piece order...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 02 2022, @08:32AM (1 child)
I'd rather use rpilocator, by the time you get that mail, these things have already been scooped up.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 02 2022, @10:55AM
Good tip, though I prefer to breathe normally until supplies are adequate to last long enough for me to place the order....
🌻🌻 [google.com]