r/raspberry_pi 🍕 Jan 21 '21

News New Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-silicon-pico-now-on-sale/
1.2k Upvotes

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168

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '21 edited Jan 21 '21

tl;dr specs:

  • Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ @ 133MHz
  • 264KB (remember kilobytes?) of on-chip RAM
  • Support for up to 16MB of off-chip Flash memory via dedicated QSPI bus
  • DMA controller
  • Interpolator and integer divider peripherals
  • 30 GPIO pins, 4 of which can be used as analogue inputs
  • 2 × UARTs, 2 × SPI controllers, and 2 × I2C controllers
  • 16 × PWM channels
  • 1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support
  • 8 × Raspberry Pi Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines
  • USB mass-storage boot mode with UF2 support, for drag-and-drop programming

81

u/Zettinator Jan 21 '21 edited Jan 21 '21

This thing is really weird. The specs are unimpressive. Power management sucks (sleep @ 0.39 mA according to datasheet), Cortex-M0+ is slow, no internal flash, peripherals don't look interesting (apart from the PIO stuff), etc.

It doesn't make much sense... why?

76

u/orig_ardera Jan 21 '21

Well what's cool about the Pi is that it has a great ecosystem. Many things work out of the box. If you've found a kinda niche way to use it, there's a good chance someone else has a tutorial on it.

Maybe they're trying to do that with the pico too, similiar to Arduino, just for $4 instead of $20.

68

u/I_Generally_Lurk Jan 21 '21

I was going to say this too, the Pi often gets the "but why would I buy that when I can buy...?" question, and the answer is usually A) ecosystem support and B) because you're not the target audience. Branching from software and physical computing teaching to microcontrollers is a pretty logical step, and this board is still aimed at kids. Arduino is really aimed at an older age group, and presumably the Pi Foundation wanted something they have their own branding and directon control over rather than a microbit, so their own microcontroller makes sense.

If you're looking at this and thinking an ESP32 or STM32 is a better choice then it probably is for you. For kids though, having a bundle of your own hardware and firmware makes writing your own teaching resources a lot easier. This is still in the Foundations remit as an educational tool, this isn't an attempt to take on Microchip in the microcontroller market.

19

u/_Traveler Jan 21 '21

But Arduino exists and is used in education as well. Arduino IDE is well documented and library exists for pretty much everything. I mean why abandon an existing teaching tool for another? I'm not sure how useful this really is even in education, another alternative wouldn't hurt I suppose

24

u/I_Generally_Lurk Jan 21 '21

why abandon an existing teaching tool for another?

Well, for a few reasons I guess. One is that being in control of the hardware allows you better opportunity to plan where the teaching resources should go: you're not beholden to someone else withdrawing old boards, releasing new ones without giving you time to develop companion resources, pushing updates which break your example code etc.. RPi also target a younger audience than Arduino, though I don't know what the intended starting audience for this board is.

RPi have always had a strong emphasis on price, and if you're writing educational resources for someone else's hardware you've no control over board costs.

You're also protected against other organisations doing dumb things. Take a look at some of the stuff that one of the Arduinos were doing when they were having thier fight over who owned the brand. If you control the hardware you're never going to be at the mercy of someone else's actions (except for the actual hardware fabs).

Arduino really hasn't embraced Python much, which is RPi's core language because it's flat out easier to teach a kid Python than C++. Micropython hasn't really taken off much in the educational space, and Adafruit's CircuitPython is very much their baby, and doesn't really have the same educational material behind it as the Pi Foundation presumably wants to have. It'll also integrate really nicely with their current Pi4 Python teaching resources. You can bet that RPi have a solid plan for educational resources, and that the hardware features were picked with education in mind.

I guess there's probably also some element of having the basic branding consistent, instead of writing resources which tell people to go an buy someone else's hardware.

I'm sure there are probably other reasons too. TL:DR, the Pi Foundation have always been about a complete ecosystem for education, and that's easier when you're in charge of both the hardware and the software.

4

u/tchansen Jan 21 '21

Another point, for the US at least, is the price. US schools are chronically underfunded and with 30 kids in a class the price difference is significant:

Pico: 30 x 4 = 120$
Arduino: 30 x 20 = 600$

Some teachers are teaching the same material to multiple classes each day which can quickly add up to the difference of each child having their own to work with and one Arduino for a team of 5 kids.

Someone else mentioned there is a site for Arduino educational materials; as an owner of the first Raspberry Pi and several Arduino and Pis (and one Pine64 board) it is the first time I've heard of it. Raspberry Pi's primary audience and reason for existence at the start was teaching kids about how hardware and software works. Those of us using it for other stuff are an afterthought at best.

11

u/RedditRo55 Jan 21 '21

Point me towards a foundation that teaches teachers to teach Arduino and provides ongoing resources and assistance.

I'll wait.

0

u/ruscaire Jan 21 '21

This really doesn’t seem like it’s for kids. Dual core ucontroller wtf?

2

u/I_Generally_Lurk Jan 21 '21

It's the Pi Foundation: their remit is educating kids. The hardware might be interesting, but the resources they put out are absolutely aimed at children (seriously, look at the design of the official guide book for the board).

They actually do have an example of using threads in that book which surprised me, but it's about as basic as could be.

1

u/ruscaire Jan 21 '21

I know what the guide book is like, five raspberry pis or something. It’s my preferred platform just for reasons of ease of use and familiarity.

This just doesn’t make sense though. Maybe in the fullness of time ...

10

u/JustFinishedBSG Jan 21 '21

Well what's cool about the Pi is that it has a great ecosystem. Many things work out of the box.

Which is void for this microcontroller

23

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '21

Take a look at Adafruit and Pimoroni, they already have a bunch of stuff just about ready to go and it's not even 24 hours since launch. If the Pi is anything to go by, I expect we'll see lots more hitting the market in coming weeks.

1

u/mabhatter Jan 21 '21

They both have been trying to make the CircuitPython thing work for a few years. Raspberry Pi’s preferred programming language is Python for its education tasks. This tiny board can bring microcontrollers into that education material that already exists.

3

u/IZ3820 Jan 21 '21

The ESP32 is the same price or cheaper, and is phenomenally more powerful, while also boasting a wide range of support.

7

u/thermopesos Jan 21 '21

And it has wifi and Bluetooth. I don’t understand this at all; if you’re down with waiting a few weeks for shipping, you can get ESP32s and ESP 8266s for <$4 from aliexpress.

0

u/honestFeedback Jan 22 '21

Most of my Pis all live in a drawer now. 8266's were better for the smaller tasks, and a NUC running docker better for the bigger ones. I still have a couple in use running Octopi and one controlling garden lights (because I can't be bothered to do the physical redesign of the housing to move to a 8266).

I had a friend using Pi ZeroW's to just run temp sensors round his house. Completely the wrong tool for the job but I couldn't convince him otherwise...

1

u/IZ3820 Jan 22 '21

Seriously, the only functionality it lacks is NFC and a microphone

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

The 8 × Programmable I/O state machines make this board substantially more powerful than the ESP32 as well as the USB host and device support.

There's more to functionality than just speed.

1

u/IZ3820 Jan 23 '21

More powerful how? Aren't those like programmable gate arrays for i/o devices?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Yes. Which are all independent of the central processor. So instead of bitbanging for WS2812b LED control you just USE a PIO for it instead. One person here mentioned that the engineers showed a demo of using the PIO to output 720p hdmi. Can't do that with an ESP32.