The Raspberry Pi Pico is a low-cost, high-performance microcontroller board with flexible digital interfaces. The Raspberry Pi Pico is minimalistic and simple. It comes equipped with a single green LED, boot select button, and power supply converter to make sure you don't fry your board at the wrong voltage. The Pico measures 0.825" x 2", which makes it perfect for attaching to a breadboard or perfboard. For permanent installation, it has headers that can be soldered in place. There are 40 pads in total with 20 pads on each side. It has groups of general-purpose input-and-output (GPIO) pins incorporated with plenty of ground pins - you can find more information about the GPIO setup here. Board Specifications: RP2040 microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the United Kingdom Dual-core Arm Cortex M0+ processor, flexible clock running up to 133 MHz 264KB of SRAM, and 2MB of on-board Flash memory The castellated module allows soldering directly to carrier boards USB 1.1 with device and host support Low-power sleep and dormant modes Drag-and-drop programming using mass storage over USB 26 × multi-function GPIO pins 2 × SPI, 2 × I2C, 2 × UART, 3 × 12-bit ADC, 16 × controllable PWM channels Accurate clock and timer on-chip Temperature sensor Accelerated floating-point libraries on-chip 8 × Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support How Does the Raspberry Pi Pico Work? In contrast to other processors that have specific hardware built-in for serial data and SDIO peripherals, the RP2040 uses PIO state machines as a unique way of creating custom logic blocks. For example, NeoPixels often need timing-specific protocols for bit-banging on software; in this processor, we run them off of their object which does perfect accuracy without taking up any CPU time. Inside the RP2040 is a 'permanent ROM' USB UF2 bootloader. This means that when you want to program new firmware, instead of plugging it into your computer like any other USB drive, hold down the BOOT SEL button while plugging in and turn on power from either an external power supply or battery pack (or pulling down RUN/Reset pin to ground). You can then drag-and-drop firmware files onto this device for programming! However, unlike most devices which take double clicks during reset time before entering into their respective operating systems; there's no need. The RP2040 might not have built-in flash memory, but it comes with an external QSPI chip that has 2MB. When using either MicroPython or CircuitPython the whole of that space is shared between the program and any file storage used by a user. Those who use C/C++ get access to all of the board's available 256KB RAM as well as its Flash Memory (2 MB) which can be accessed through SPI0 pins for programming in Python; while users will only get 1 MB left on their own when running code written in Python programs like Pygame or Blinky Lite. Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040 FAQ Should I buy a Raspberry Pi Pico or a Raspberry Pi Zero? Raspberry Pi Zero is more of a multifunctional device, whereas Raspberry Pi Pico plugs into one task. A microcontroller can be plugged in for specific tasks or as the controller on an embedded system; while microcomputers are meant to run your operating systems and applications like Windows 10/Linux Mint. The two devices have different purposes - but what's interesting about them isn't just their capabilities, it's how they perform those functions at very different levels of power consumption: with less than half the energy usage! What OS does it run? The chip doesn't run an OS by default, but it does come with a rich library of functions to help you use the hardware/features. You can write “bare metal” C or C++ applications easily using its SDK and higher-level functionality like that found in an operating system is available too - MicroPython for beginners who want something simpler! Is it open-source? The Raspberry Pi Pico board is a circuit board with the latest microcontroller technology to put your unique ideas into action. The design files are open-source, along with all the provided software and documentation so you can start programming right away! The internal design of the RP2040 microcontroller itself is not open-source. Does it support Arduino/Blockly/other programming environments? No, however some third parties have portedtheir systems over to make them available for the Pico. Is RP2040 5V tolerant? No. RP2040 microcontrollers use 3.3V for GPIO. I've accidentally connected +5V to my Raspberry Pi Pico or other RP2040-based microcontroller. Is the pin dead? It depends; often RP2040 will survive, but it is not recommended and can reduce the life of the microcontroller. What low-power modes are there? To reduce power consumption, you can do several things. For example, slowing down the system clock and powering some memories off will help to extend battery life. There are two specific modes for turning off parts of the device when not being used: SLEEP mode is when processors are in wifi/wife and DMA is inactive, so you can shut off most system clocks, including things like bus fabric. DORMANT mode is when you shut down all oscillators, and so is lower power still, but then you have fewer options for waking. I’m using VSCode. How do I set a breakpoint on the second core? At the moment you need to use the command window in VSCode to set a gdb breakpoint. GCC 10.2 is available. Why aren’t you using it by default? Development work has been using the more common versions of GCC as supplied with various distributions. Builds using major gcc versions from 6.3.1 to 10.2 have been checked, so all of those should work. What is the maximum flash size for the RP2040 chip? The RP2040 chip has 16 MiB of flash (2^24 bytes). Can I overclock the Raspberry Pi Pico? The maximum clk_sys clock speed is 133MHz at a normal core voltage (1.1V ±10%), but it can be overclocked by increasing the power and supplying a higher core voltage to your device, which may shorten its life expectancy. No warranties are given when running outside of the limits specified in the datasheet. Raspberry Pi Pico Resources: Getting Started with Pico Raspberry Pi C/C++ support Raspberry Pi Pico Datasheet Pico C/C++ SDK Pico Python SDK MicroPython port CircuitPython port RP2040 Datasheet Hardware Design with RP2040
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