Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched three iterations of its popular Raspberry Pi Pico single board computer that will allow wireless connectivity to internet of things (IoT) applications.
Since the Pico launched in 2021, nearly two million boards have been sold. The ongoing semiconductor shortage has accelerated adoption of the single board computer with design engineers and makers both using the board for industrial and commercial products.
In order to connect the Raspberry Pi Pico to IoT devices, the board was missing a method for connecting to networks. The launch of the Raspberry Pi Pico W, Pico H and Pico WH will bring 802.11n wireless networking to the platform while retaining pin compatibility with the original Pi Pico.
The single board computers are priced at $5 for the Pico H, $6 for the Pico W and $7 for the Pico WH. Pre-populated headers have been added to the Pico H and WH while a three-pin debug connecter has also been added to the Pico and Pico W. The Pico W also contains Infineon’s CYW43439 wireless chip.
The Raspberry Pi Pico board is powered by the RP2040 microcontroller that is built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s (TSMC) 40 nm low-power process. It also contains two 133 MHz Arm Cortex-M0+ cores, 264 kB of on-chip SRAM and programmable I/O subsystem.
The Pico SDK includes wireless networking support for C developers and is built around IwIP and uses libcyw43 to communicate with the wireless chip in the Pico W. The libcyw43 is licensed for non-commercial use, but Pico W users and anyone who builds products around RP2040 and CYW43439 receive a free commercial-use license.
