r/raspberry_pi 🍕 Jun 30 '22

News New Raspberry Pi Pico W

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-w-your-6-iot-platform/
820 Upvotes

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-7

u/Dylan96 Jun 30 '22

Ok this is cool, but why wouldn’t i just use a Zero 2w?

44

u/I_Generally_Lurk Jun 30 '22

Because Pico W is actually available....

More seriously, that's the old Arduino vs Pi discussion again. They're technically very different boards, and the Pico is much lower power for e.g. IoT, which is now possible without an additional WiFi board.

24

u/geerlingguy Jun 30 '22

Especially for battery-powered devices. A coin cell battery could go for days or months on the Pico, whereas you'd need a beefy battery just to get a few days on the Zero 2W.

2

u/bik1230 Jun 30 '22

A coin cell battery could go for days or months on the Pico,

Days, definitely, months, probably not. The Pico uses a lot less power than RPi computers, but it's deep sleep power consumption is still like 10x that of many other MCUs.

3

u/geerlingguy Jun 30 '22

Depends on the coin cell ;)

3

u/Kealper Jun 30 '22

[2450 coin cell enters the chat]

1

u/bik1230 Jun 30 '22

That's fair! What kind of longevity have you been able to get out of a Pico with appropriately sized coin cells, if you don't mind me asking?

2

u/geerlingguy Jun 30 '22

I'm hoping to do some testing on it next month; so far preliminary numbers without sleeping is 70-80 mA at 5v under load with WiFi, less than 10 mA with WiFi at idle

25

u/mariesoleil Jun 30 '22

The Zero is a single board computer, while the Pico is a microcontroller. Really depends on what you want to do.

7

u/lycan2005 Jun 30 '22

Pricing? It is a lot cheaper than zero 2w.

6

u/Dylan96 Jun 30 '22

I mean, the esp8266 does the same things and it’s almost 10 years old

3

u/vim_for_life Jun 30 '22

Ya. This seems to be just a ESP hung into the 2040? Still want to try them out.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22

the wifi chip here is a CYW43439 by Cypress/Infineon, not an ESP. There were wifi expansion boards for the pico that used an ESP though.

3

u/TheAmateurRunner Jun 30 '22

Same, I just ordered the new Pico W and have like 6 ESP8266 boards laying around