5 ms·

Why? Why should I need/buy one? RaspberryPI is a relatively good "PC" for cheap, uses little power and is fast enough for most usecases at home. RaspberryPi z

Why? Why should I need/buy one? RaspberryPI is a relatively good "PC" for cheap, uses little power and is fast enough for most usecases at home. RaspberryPi zero is a bit slower, but a lot smaller.... and harder to buy. Neither of them have any good alternatives on the market (yes i know many other similar boards exist, but software support is really shitty for those "alternative" boards, especially after a few years). Why PI Pico? What killer feature does it have, compared to esp32 (which has wifi), arduino (which as a gajillion libraries and support), or some other microcontroller (bbc micro, STM,...)? EDIT: not trying to shit on their effort, but genuinely looking for an answer to "why this, and not something else (arduino, esp,...)?"

pulse7 6y ago
Uses much less power and comes from Raspberry PI Foundation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
alin23 6y ago
PIO state machines programmable in Python sound pretty neat: > You'll note there's no I2S peripheral, or SDIO, or camera, what's up with that? Well instead of having specific hardware support for serial-data-like peripherals like these, the RP2040 comes with the PIO state machine system which is a unique and powerful way to create custom hardware logic and data processing blocks that run on their own without taking up a CPU. For example, NeoPixels - often we bitbang the timing-specific protocol for these LEDs. For the RP2040, we instead use a PIO object that reads in the data buffer and clocks out the right bitstream with perfect accuracy. Same with I2S audio in or out, LED matrix displays, 8-bit or SPI based TFTs, even VGA! In MicroPython and CircuitPython you can create PIO control commands to script the peripheral and load it in at runtime. There are 2 PIO peripherals with 4 state machines each. [1] Two M0 cores with M4 speeds and priced lower than usual M0-based boards also sounds exciting: > The RP2040 is a powerful chip, which has the clock speed of our M4 (SAMD51), and two cores that are equivalent to our M0 (SAMD21). [1] And official support for MicroPython and USB host and guest for $4 is something rare and could potentially lure some tinkerers into embedded programming. I personally plan to create an USB ambient light sensor for controlling Lunar [2] with it. It is a very affordable and widely available board which could potentially allow people to reproduce the sensor even in places where I can't ship a pre-assembled board. [1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4864 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4864 [2] https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi
- JustSomeNobody 6y ago
  For anyone who's ever had to bitbang a protocol (say, RS232), after you've done it once, the "Oh, cool" factor wears off[0], so what they've done here sounds really nice. [0] It's not hard, it's easy. But who wants to do that?
  - throwaway81523 6y ago
    It actually sounds sort of difficult on those PIOs. All the timing stuff, start and stop bits, parity, flow control, ideally a FIFO, etc. You only have 32 words of instruction memory in each PIO. I wish they had made the PIOs more capable. It's not like they take a lot of die area compared to 264k of ram etc. The Beaglebone PRU's are closer to the right thing.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Presumably for any well-known protocol you'll be able to use a ready-made implementation. Which basically turns them into super-flexible IO modules.
- afandian 6y ago
  I2S was a blocker for me (ESP32 has a dedicated I2S peripheral). Then I saw this: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-audio-pack https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-audio-pack So they obviously have a working I2S implementation working (it's not a hard protocol, but great to be shipping with real proofs of concept)
rasz 6y ago
IO accelerators allow it to bitbang DVI 720@30 https://github.com/Wren6991/picodvi https://github.com/Wren6991/picodvi This means you should be be able to bitbang a ton of slower stuff with ease. 1Gbit (RGMII) ethernet, IDE PATA, SCSI, all kinds of parallel camera and display interfaces.

pulse7 6y ago

Uses much less power and comes from Raspberry PI Foundation.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

alin23 6y ago

PIO state machines programmable in Python sound pretty neat: > You'll note there's no I2S peripheral, or SDIO, or camera, what's up with that? Well instead of having specific hardware support for serial-data-like peripherals like these, the RP2040 comes with the PIO state machine system which is a unique and powerful way to create custom hardware logic and data processing blocks that run on their own without taking up a CPU. For example, NeoPixels - often we bitbang the timing-specific protocol for these LEDs. For the RP2040, we instead use a PIO object that reads in the data buffer and clocks out the right bitstream with perfect accuracy. Same with I2S audio in or out, LED matrix displays, 8-bit or SPI based TFTs, even VGA! In MicroPython and CircuitPython you can create PIO control commands to script the peripheral and load it in at runtime. There are 2 PIO peripherals with 4 state machines each. [1] Two M0 cores with M4 speeds and priced lower than usual M0-based boards also sounds exciting: > The RP2040 is a powerful chip, which has the clock speed of our M4 (SAMD51), and two cores that are equivalent to our M0 (SAMD21). [1] And official support for MicroPython and USB host and guest for $4 is something rare and could potentially lure some tinkerers into embedded programming. I personally plan to create an USB ambient light sensor for controlling Lunar [2] with it. It is a very affordable and widely available board which could potentially allow people to reproduce the sensor even in places where I can't ship a pre-assembled board. [1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4864 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4864 [2] https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi

JustSomeNobody 6y ago
For anyone who's ever had to bitbang a protocol (say, RS232), after you've done it once, the "Oh, cool" factor wears off[0], so what they've done here sounds really nice. [0] It's not hard, it's easy. But who wants to do that?
- throwaway81523 6y ago
  It actually sounds sort of difficult on those PIOs. All the timing stuff, start and stop bits, parity, flow control, ideally a FIFO, etc. You only have 32 words of instruction memory in each PIO. I wish they had made the PIOs more capable. It's not like they take a lot of die area compared to 264k of ram etc. The Beaglebone PRU's are closer to the right thing.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Presumably for any well-known protocol you'll be able to use a ready-made implementation. Which basically turns them into super-flexible IO modules.
afandian 6y ago
I2S was a blocker for me (ESP32 has a dedicated I2S peripheral). Then I saw this: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-audio-pack https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-audio-pack So they obviously have a working I2S implementation working (it's not a hard protocol, but great to be shipping with real proofs of concept)

rasz 6y ago

IO accelerators allow it to bitbang DVI 720@30 https://github.com/Wren6991/picodvi https://github.com/Wren6991/picodvi This means you should be be able to bitbang a ton of slower stuff with ease. 1Gbit (RGMII) ethernet, IDE PATA, SCSI, all kinds of parallel camera and display interfaces.