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I recently found out that there exist a Pico W although it is always out of stock at all vendors in my country. This could give some serious competition to ESP.

I recently found out that there exist a Pico W although it is always out of stock at all vendors in my country. This could give some serious competition to ESP. Any idea when these supply chain issues will get resolved?

regularfry 4y ago
It's only just been released. Pico's generally have pretty good stock levels so I suspect what you're seeing is just launch demand.
GravitasFailure 4y ago
The Pico W may not have been in stock for you yet. I believe the earliest it shipped from vendors was July 5th, so it's probably worth your while to keep checking back.
IshKebab 4y ago
A significant flaw of the Pico W is that its idle power draw is too high for battery operation. Rules out a ton of applications that you typically would use a wireless microcontroller like the ESP32 or nRF5x for.
kkielhofner 4y ago
The Pico W is quite a bit behind the ESP32 family (for example): https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-C5 https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-C5 As far as I can tell the Pico W is worse than the ESP32 in most ways. The ESP32 was released in 2016! The Pico and Pico W are strange… I suspect the audience (much like the Raspberry Pi) is a “my first microcontroller” crowd. Just like the Raspberry Pi was “my first Linux embedded anything” crowd. These are both great and I fully support it! However, Raspberry Pi remains the champion even when faced with vastly superior hardware because of the documentation, community, ecosystem, and first mover advantage. Here not only is Espressif offering superior hardware they’re doing so with an ecosystem that’s been in the making for almost a decade going back to the ESP8266. It runs MicroPython, anything in the Arduino ecosystem, Platform IO support, the Espressif low level IDF, AND you can Google just about “esp32 + anything” and find almost endless libraries, examples, etc. This SDK doesn’t have Bluetooth working while the ESP32 ecosystem is in such a mature state there are projects dedicated to cameras, audio projects, a million other peripherals, and even on board inference with TensorFlow Lite (which has been around for two years). The Pico and Pico W will be very successful because they have the Raspberry Pi name but it’s strange to me they’re introducing a solution that gets pretty handily beat in all aspects by hardware that’s been readily available for half a decade. I’m sure users and customers have been asking for it and there are other factors at play (contracting, supply chain, who knows) but I don’t quite understand (especially for the tinkerer) what advantage(s) this really provides over the ESP32 (as one example). Oh, and it’s cheaper and VERY readily available.
- adolph 4y ago
  ++ on espressif It is really nice to see a company firing on all cylinders. It is interesting to see them get a training partner and release a language targeted development board (to be released soon?). https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP_RUST_training https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP_RUST_training https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-rust-board https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-rust-board
- bioemerl 4y ago
  Pico W isn't Chinese and if you care about that it's almost always a better choice.
- auxym 4y ago
  > The Pico and Pico W are strange The pico competes exactly in the same world where Arduino does. The Arduino Uno still sells for 30$ despite a very old and limited AVR chip. Pico is a great deal compared to that, at 5$ for a double core ARM cortex M0 (and more flash, ram, real DAC, etc). Yes, the ESP32 might also be a good deal in that space. ESP used to have their own weird architecture though? I think newer ones are RISC-V? Some people might prefer a somewhat more standard cortex-M.

regularfry 4y ago

It's only just been released. Pico's generally have pretty good stock levels so I suspect what you're seeing is just launch demand.

GravitasFailure 4y ago

The Pico W may not have been in stock for you yet. I believe the earliest it shipped from vendors was July 5th, so it's probably worth your while to keep checking back.

IshKebab 4y ago

A significant flaw of the Pico W is that its idle power draw is too high for battery operation. Rules out a ton of applications that you typically would use a wireless microcontroller like the ESP32 or nRF5x for.

kkielhofner 4y ago

The Pico W is quite a bit behind the ESP32 family (for example): https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-C5 https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-C5 As far as I can tell the Pico W is worse than the ESP32 in most ways. The ESP32 was released in 2016! The Pico and Pico W are strange… I suspect the audience (much like the Raspberry Pi) is a “my first microcontroller” crowd. Just like the Raspberry Pi was “my first Linux embedded anything” crowd. These are both great and I fully support it! However, Raspberry Pi remains the champion even when faced with vastly superior hardware because of the documentation, community, ecosystem, and first mover advantage. Here not only is Espressif offering superior hardware they’re doing so with an ecosystem that’s been in the making for almost a decade going back to the ESP8266. It runs MicroPython, anything in the Arduino ecosystem, Platform IO support, the Espressif low level IDF, AND you can Google just about “esp32 + anything” and find almost endless libraries, examples, etc. This SDK doesn’t have Bluetooth working while the ESP32 ecosystem is in such a mature state there are projects dedicated to cameras, audio projects, a million other peripherals, and even on board inference with TensorFlow Lite (which has been around for two years). The Pico and Pico W will be very successful because they have the Raspberry Pi name but it’s strange to me they’re introducing a solution that gets pretty handily beat in all aspects by hardware that’s been readily available for half a decade. I’m sure users and customers have been asking for it and there are other factors at play (contracting, supply chain, who knows) but I don’t quite understand (especially for the tinkerer) what advantage(s) this really provides over the ESP32 (as one example). Oh, and it’s cheaper and VERY readily available.

adolph 4y ago
++ on espressif It is really nice to see a company firing on all cylinders. It is interesting to see them get a training partner and release a language targeted development board (to be released soon?). https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP_RUST_training https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP_RUST_training https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-rust-board https://github.com/esp-rs/esp-rust-board
bioemerl 4y ago
Pico W isn't Chinese and if you care about that it's almost always a better choice.
auxym 4y ago
> The Pico and Pico W are strange The pico competes exactly in the same world where Arduino does. The Arduino Uno still sells for 30$ despite a very old and limited AVR chip. Pico is a great deal compared to that, at 5$ for a double core ARM cortex M0 (and more flash, ram, real DAC, etc). Yes, the ESP32 might also be a good deal in that space. ESP used to have their own weird architecture though? I think newer ones are RISC-V? Some people might prefer a somewhat more standard cortex-M.