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Raspberry Silicon update: RP2040 on sale now at $1
- lnsru 5y agoI guess, this chip comes on time. The other vendors have difficulties with providing enough similar chips on time. If RP2040 is reliably available it will be large success.
- bbernhard90 5y agoWhat I would really like to see is a ESP32/ESP8266 competitor. A small 32bit uC with built in WiFi. That would be really awesome.
- tym0 5y agoThey're starting to have boards with RP2040 + Wifi (Wio RP2040 mini, Arduino Connect RP2040) but they seem more expensive than ESP32 boards...
- geokon 5y agoThere are new RISC-V chips that aim to do that: https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/10/24/bl602-bl604-risc-v-wifi-bluetooth-5-0-le-soc-will-sell-at-esp8266-price-point/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/10/24/bl602-bl604-risc-v-w... Here is a recently announced board: https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/05/28/rv-debugger-plus-uart-jtag-debug-board-bl702-zigbee-ble-risc-v-soc/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/05/28/rv-debugger-plus-uar...
- nieksand 5y agoI have been playing with the Pico for a couple of weeks now, though I haven't incorporated it into any big projects yet. The quality of the documentation is phenomenal. Very competent people clearly put serious effort into making it great. Another stand out is the Programmable I/O feature. Basically, you have eight separate, programmable state machines that can manipulate I/O pins and do DMA. This lets you offload bit banging from the main cores. Details are in Chapter 3 of the C API docs: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/pico/raspberry-pi-pico-c-sdk.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/pico/raspberry-pi-pico-c-... I'm a total amateur when it comes to embedded development, so I have no idea how the RP2040 sits in the competitive landscape.
- tobijkl 5y agoThe documentation is excellent, and the Programmable I/O (PIO) is a unique feature. Still, the lack of WiFi and Bluetooth makes the RP2040 uninteresting for me compared to the ESP32 in a DIY project. With the ESP32, I can quickly throw in a web interface and use Over-The-Air updates. I think they missed the opportunity to position them against the ESP32.
- martyvis 5y agoTotally agree. Their release seems to make it seem that dual core with multiple hundred K of RAM is unique. The elephant in the room is while it has nice GPIO interfaces for sensors, you want onboard wireless for backhaul. Espressif have had this space for a couple of years now.
- 6f8986c3 5y agoFor secure applications, on-board wireless makes your life hell. I'm actually pretty happy they didn't.
- nousermane 5y agoDepending on application and how you define "secure", you might find that having an easily sniffable SPI/SDIO/UART connection between main MCU and wifi chip can be a weakness.
- 6f8986c3 5y agoI believe the point is "no wifi whatsoever". If you need wifi, by all means, go integrated. But not everybody does.
- kortex 5y agoI can think of many application with no need for wireless backhaul, or where wireless becomes a liability. It boils down to cost, power, noise, security, frequency used, and complexity. LoRa or similar is probably better than Wifi for many applications. I like that it isn't opinionated about the wireless stack. I'm guessing that lots of Picos will see use as enhanced GPIOs for Pi "motherships," which provide backhaul to multiple wired-in Picos. In fact I have a project which could use a decidedly non-wireless USB GPIO, for use on an airplane imaging system.
- pjmlp 5y ago> With 264KB of RAM, you can concentrate on implementing features, not optimising your application for size. I love this comment. Anyone old enough to have coded for 8 and 16 bit home computers, or older mainframes knows how this is true, but it feels quite funny on the day and age of multi-GB heap sizes.
- tinus_hn 5y agoThis device doesn’t do video but for a computer like device you’d want it to drive a 1920x1080 display, which is about 6 mb of framebuffer already. And then you need content to put on it.
- pjmlp 5y agoNah, for C64 or SAM coupé class hardware would be quite alright.
- cjdaly 5y agothe chip can do some video, but low res: - https://excamera.com/sphinx/store.html#gameduino-3x-dazzler-for-pico-39 https://excamera.com/sphinx/store.html#gameduino-3x-dazzler-... - https://www.adafruit.com/product/4984 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4984
- HALtheWise 5y agoWhile your point in general stands, I do want to point out that 1080p video from a RP2040 has actually been done, and is mind-blowing. https://youtu.be/mjFwR3feyV0 https://youtu.be/mjFwR3feyV0 This definitely isn't the sort of programming where you can just wastefully allocate ram for a full uncompressed frame buffer, but that also opens the door to sub-frame latencies.
- guenthert 5y agoI don't have the need for a FHD display driven by a MCU, but 'racing-the-beam' seems feasible with a RP2040. (which would allow using the screen at high resolution for, say, game graphics -- actual video is a different story)
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- iratic0 5y agoI use my RPi 4 quite a bit, but what are the uses of this, and of the RPi Pico?
- trasz 5y agoSame as Arduino, just not technologically obsolete.
- anaganisk 5y agoWhy is Arduino technologically obselete? Isn't arduino supposed to be a framework on which you build various applications using wide range of microcontrollers?
- trasz 5y agoI believe what most people think of when they say "Arduino" are the boards themselves, not the IDE. And the thing with the boards is, they are either obsolete, or expensive. RPi Pico is neither. And it comes with a modern language support, not a Java frontend to C compiler.
- blueflow 5y agoHow can the Arduino boards be obsolete? I still use nano clones because they are cheap AVR m328p boards with a fine power regulator and a sane quartz.
- trasz 5y agoWhat's the point of using an eight bit microcontroller if you can get something that's order of magnitude more capable for the same price?
- mschuster91 5y agoPower usage, for one.
- roland35 5y ago$1 is a competitive price for a cortex m0+ processor, especially with single quantities! The QFN package is slightly painful for prototyping, but certainly isn't an issue for automated production. I will definitely add the RP4020 to my drawer of dev kits and microcontrollers!
- chadcmulligan 5y ago2 cores and 264KB ram and I/O do you know of anything else competitive for the price?
- roland35 5y agoThe only thing that comes to mind is the ESP32, but that isn't directly comparable. Something like the SAMD21 is about $1 at 5k quantities but only has one core and about 32-128k of RAM
- bschwindHN 5y agoDoes anyone have any interesting applications of the programmable IO? I want to use it for something but I'm struggling to come up with good ideas. Driving WS2012B LEDs could be fun but basically any microcontroller can already do that.
- kortex 5y agoTons. This is great to slap in temperature controllers, actuators, control loop things and the like. I would probably use this in lieu of the Pi Automation Hat for things like my greenhouse controller, if I didn't already have the parts for it. It would also be great for making into RS232 driven GPIO boards using a simple protocol. Actually I'd love to see someone develop a daisy-chainable automation IO board using these. Auto-sense the neighbors, assign registers to I/O pins, and make a protocol based on Msgpack or a subset.
- dimatura 5y agoI really like the flexibility of having advanced I/O capabilities on almost any pin, specially when I'm not designing the PCB from the ground up. With the older atmegas I find myself sometimes constrained by having to use this pin or that pin for a specific function. A lot of newer chips like ESP32 or the SAMD's are also fairly flexible when it comes to I/O, though maybe less so.
- fest 5y agoI found an excuse to learn PIO in sampling linear CCD sensor. The gist of it is: sensor needs accurate (us) shutter signal, then a strobe on another signal to start clocking the data out. On each clock you'd like to acquire an ADC sample (but ADC sampling should happen some time after clock edge, as that's when the sensor changes it's output multiplexer to select next pixel). Doable to solve on an STM32 by bitbanging, but PIO makes more elegant solution (start the PIO program, read acquired samples via DMA).
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y agoHere it's used to implement ethernet: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/how-to-add-ethernet-to-raspberry-pi-pico/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/how-to-add-ethernet-to-rasp... And DVI: https://hackaday.com/2021/02/12/bitbanged-dvi-on-a-raspberry-pi-rp2040-microcontroller/ https://hackaday.com/2021/02/12/bitbanged-dvi-on-a-raspberry...
- jangid 5y agoI wish there is a socket available to experiment with it on a breadboard.
- kortex 5y agoJust solder pins to it and plug it in to a breadboard. It is kind of a bummer that it seems to be 0.1" wider than a DIP socket.
- imtringued 5y agoWhat prevents you from using the Raspberry Pi Pico for that?
- dan1234 5y agoThe Pico[1] is pretty much the RP2040 on a breakout board, and is breadboard mountable (also includes the necessary usb interface). [1]https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-pico/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-pico/
- hwj 5y agoI wish that would be a RISC-V instead of Cortex-M0+.
- dan1234 5y agoThe ESP32-C3[1] might be of interest to you. Also includes 2.4GHz Wifi & Bluetooth 5. [1]https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32_C3 https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32_C3
- greatgib 5y ago$1 but you have to buy them by 500 units at a time...: https://www.kubii.fr/raspberry-pi-microbit/3328-microcontroleur-raspberry-pi-rp2040-3272496306509.html?src=raspberrypi https://www.kubii.fr/raspberry-pi-microbit/3328-microcontrol...
- aallan 5y agoYou really don't. That's a small reel, most resellers are making it available in cut tape (single unit, or 10 chip) quantities. 500 and 3,400 unit reels will be available later in the year (in the autumn). They aren't generally available now.
- c8g 5y agoSingle unit, Limit to 3 unit(s) per customer. https://www.cytron.io/p-raspberry-pi-rp2040-dual-core-microcontroller https://www.cytron.io/p-raspberry-pi-rp2040-dual-core-microc...
- unwind 5y agoMaybe I'm old-fashioned (the first microcontroller I used was the venerable Microchip PIC16F84, back in the late 90s) but I still think they label it "perfect" when it has no on-board program storage (i.e. flash). To me, that just makes things so much more complicated than most of the competition, since any board has to go multi-chip in order to add external flash. What am I missing?
- kumarvvr 5y agoI guess the intended audience for the chip are board / module designers, who can customize various interfaces and parameters to suit the final requirement. Having one chip, with the RaspberryPi branding, and great documentation, should allow for development of families of development / educational boards.
- RantyDave 5y agoHuh, that is indeed truly weird - and I would've thought this would not be all that good from a security perspective either. I'm pretty happy with the nRF ecosystem, it has to be said.
- Renaud 5y agoI love the work of the Raspberry Pi foundation. They have changed the market with their innovation and the fact that their hardware has staying power and a huge amount of support. Some will object that none of this is the best hardware or that there are cheaper solutions but it doesn't really matter because basically none of the alternatives have such breadth of support. You can get and Orange Pi or Banana Pi or cheap arduino clone for cheaper and some have better spec but invariably you will end up with a partially implemented SDK, linux images that won't be updated and drivers that often don't really work. There are exceptions but with things like the Compute Module 4, you get all the advantage of a widely supported platform with the flexibility of building it in your product and knowing it will be supported for many years (if you can get your hands on it though). The Pico is in the same vein: it has some innovative aspects, like the PIO and lots of RAM but it's basically a dual core Cortex M0+, just like another gazillion micros. The difference is that it's extremely well documented out of the box; it took years for the ESP chips to get any decent documentation. It also comes with a boot loader and has support for at least C SDK, CircuitPython and MicroPython and there is basically no limit to implement other interpreted language platforms. Switching from one system the other is as easy as copying a file onto a USB drive and rebooting the pico. Most small projects don't need Wifi. The ESP32 is great for that if you need it. The RP2040 is also cheap. The Rpi foundation doesn't make a profit and they work hard at ensuring the hardware is as cheap as it can be. At USD1 it's a very competitive offering for something so versatile. Now the main issue is going to be availability. They only make 40,000 units available for the next 3 months. It's basically a box of a few dozen rolls. A drop in the ocean. With their usual success and the current supply chain issues, it's going to take months before it becomes widely available. Pretty sure we'll still be struggling to by more than 10 units at a time at this time next year...
- dimatura 5y agoThat's great, except they're already relatively hard to find as-is. (If you click on the links on that page -- Adafruit, Sparkfun and Pimoroni -- the RP2040-based products are pretty much all out of stock). Sort of reminds me of the Pi Zero, which in theory costs $5, but was pretty hard to find at that price for a long time.
- cjdaly 5y agoI buy from all of those places, but when they are sold out I also check digikey (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0915/13684020 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC09...) and canakit (https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-pico.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-pico.html). They both have it now. Digikey says "2 in stock" but I think this really means "2 per customer" because there is another view I found where it looks like they have 14000+ in stock (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/evaluation-boards-embedded-mcu-dsp/786?s=N4IgTCBcDaIA4EsDGB7EBdAvkA https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/evaluation-boards...)
- rubicks 5y agoCan someone familiar with the subject speak on the state of the TrustZone in this chip?
- jokoon 5y agoNot gonna buy a RPi unless it comes with quality flash memory.
- dan1234 5y agoWhat's the power draw like? I couldn't find anything in the datasheet
- nieksand 5y agoSome example power draws are in Section 5.4 of the RP2040 datasheet: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/rp2040/rp2040-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/rp2040/rp2040-datasheet.p...
- dan1234 5y agoThanks! I'd only looked as far as section 2.9 (Power Supplies) and then gave up when a search for mAh turned up nothing.
- dmitrygr 5y agoMissing detail: only 40ku for sale, not serious amounts.
- tonteldoos 5y agoThere is one other elephant in the room that doesn't seem to be discussed much - lack of a code read protect feature (primarily, I guess, because lack of onboard flash). I've ordered my first pico, and am really looking forward to playing with it (having done a lot of ARM work commercially lately), and from a maker's point, I think the foundation have it absolutely nailed feature-wise. In fact, I'm considering using the pico for a (potentially commercial) side project I've been wanting to do for years, but haven't found a cheap, powerful platform to do it on. However, for anything that wants to transition to a commercial product, lack of CRP is a major roadblock. Yes, I know we all should/want to make our code open source, and have a support model for revenue. For most embedded sellable products, the core IP is the code that runs on the micro, the development of which will be the main driver for product cost. If someone can easily lift that, hardware is easy(ish) to copy, and can potentially significantly undercut your product cost (and your ability to run a viable business).