A new Pi joins the family - The Raspberry Pi foundation released the Raspberry Pi Pico W a 6$ microcontroller for IOT

[AndreiArgeanu]

Summary

The Raspberry Pi foundation has released the Raspberry Pi Pico W a micro controller equipped with their RP2040 micro controller and now includes 802.11n wireless networking priced at 6$. Additionally an official Raspberry Pi Pico H has also been released which is a Raspberry Pi Pico with pre soldered headers including a 3 pin debug connector. A Pi Pico WH is expected to follow in August.

 

Quotes

Quote

Since launch, we’ve sold nearly two million Pico boards, and RP2040 has found its way into a huge number of third-party products. We always believed that RP2040 was a great fit for commercial and industrial applications, but the global semiconductor shortage has vastly accelerated adoption. With millions of units on hand today, and pipeline in place for tens of millions more, design engineers who have been let down by their current suppliers have a perfect excuse to experiment.

 

Fast cores, large memory, and flexible interfacing make RP2040 a natural building block for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. But Pico itself has one obvious missing feature for IoT: a method for connecting to the network. Now, this is about to change.

 

Today, we’re launching three new members of the Pico family. Raspberry Pi Pico W is priced at $6, and brings 802.11n wireless networking to the Pico platform, while retaining complete pin compatibility with its older sibling. 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.

 

We’ve worked with our friends at Infineon to add their CYW43439 wireless chip to Pico W. Like all modern Raspberry Pi boards, the radio circuitry is encapsulated in a metal shield can, reducing compliance costs for customers who want to integrate it into their own products.

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.

My thoughts

 I think this is a great addition to the Pi family, a ultra low cost Wi-Fi and potentially bluetooth micro controller that's widely available. Great for IOT applications, might end up using this myself for some home automation applications. The Pico H and WH are also much needed additions since few retailers had the option to buy the Pico with a pre soldered header, never mind a debug port but now these options should make the Pico much more accessible and I expect the H and WH models to be the best selling overall to consumers.

 

Sources

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-w-your-6-iot-platform/

[Quackers101]

stack 600 for a good time.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Damn, I was hoping for a pi 5 lol

[TVwazhere]

Sadly I still cant buy a Pi 3, 4 or zero  

[AndreiArgeanu]

32 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

Sadly I still cant buy a Pi 3, 4 or zero  

That's a shame. I got lucky since I bought Zero 2W around launch. And the pi 4 long before shortages. Current lead time for Pi 3B and Pi 4B is 27/02/2023 and for the Zero 2W is 03/04/2023 in the UK. I hope they were just over estimating, it genuinely seems way too long. I guess them being used commercially had a massive toll on the general availability to the public. At least their micro controllers will be available in large quantities and hardly go out of stock and they're cheap which is why this release is great. Maybe people will start using these micro controller more often in cases where the features of a Zero or Pi 3/4 is not needed.

[Lurick]

1 hour ago, TVwazhere said:

Sadly I still cant buy a Pi 3, 4 or zero  

You can, you just have to pay about $200 for it

[ebprince the computer nerd]

Does Raspberry Pi sell real Raspberry pies? In all seriousness, I like what they do. Cheap PC normally = bad, but this isn’t half-bad.

[williamcll]

Wasn't it said that picos were overpriced?

[igormp]

30 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Wasn't it said that picos were overpriced?

The devboards? Nah, they're just a tad bit over other devboards just as the esp32.

 

As for main mass purchases of the ICs themselves, I have no idea.

[cmndr]

I'll be happy when there's a pi5 that can pretty much serve as a "parent machine" - think something that can run youtube and netflix with ease and is fine for email and very basic office work.

 

I think we need a few more doublings of compute power.

[Video Beagle]

12 hours ago, Lurick said:

You can, you just have to pay about $200 for it

seriously?  .......i'm thinking maybe I should give ebay a looksee..

[AlTech]

Interesting. I'm defo interested in buying the WH model when that comes out.

[igormp]

7 hours ago, cmndr said:

I'll be happy when there's a pi5 that can pretty much serve as a "parent machine" - think something that can run youtube and netflix with ease and is fine for email and very basic office work.

 

I think we need a few more doublings of compute power.

Media consumption wouldn't be a problem if browsers actually tapped onto its decoders, but sadly the state of linux media decoding with browsers is sad

[Brian McKee]

14 hours ago, Lurick said:

You can, you just have to pay about $200 for it

Maybe I should hock my unused pi zero w.

[Lurick]

2 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

seriously?  .......i'm thinking maybe I should give ebay a looksee..

Yup, I was looking to get a Pi4 the other day and that was $200 the Pi3 B+ was $250 at least on Amazon via third party sellers of course.

[Shreyas1]

20 hours ago, Helpful Tech Witch said:

Damn, I was hoping for a pi 5 lol

Let people get their hands on pi 4s first 

[Ultraforce]

It depends on where you live, Canakit has some Raspberry Pi 4 kits some of which have 4 GB so not just the 2 GB version and they are between 140 and 170 Canadian

[Helpful Tech Witch]

15 hours ago, Shreyas1 said:

Let people get their hands on pi 4s first 

i got a pi4 8gb a year and a half ago for msrp lol

i need more power

[Video Beagle]

22 hours ago, Lurick said:

Yup, I was looking to get a Pi4 the other day and that was $200 the Pi3 B+ was $250 at least on Amazon via third party sellers of course.

i got a pi 3..and a pi zero..unused..sitting in my project box..for a good couple of years now and the likelyhood of getting around to using them is low..,,definitly should look at passing it along if the prices are good..

[Isuck Assimov]

Definitely useful for projects that need multiple analog pins since D1-Mini Clones only come with 1 ADC.

The amount of GPIO on raspi is just real dandy

VS

[igormp]

19 minutes ago, Assimov said:

Definitely useful for projects that need multiple analog pins since D1-Mini Clones only come with 1 ADC.

The amount of GPIO on raspi is just real dandy

VS

There are D1-Minis with ESP32s instead of the esp8266, with builtin bt and wifi on the same SoC, so the final board would be smaller than a rp2040+its wifi companion.