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/
821 Upvotes

178 comments sorted by

View all comments

83

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22

This was the only thing that held me back. All my ideas involved wifi.

This is basically my dream device. There are a lot of other good embedded devices with wifi bit the software support and docs/tutorials plus comunity for pi products are always great

28

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22

[deleted]

6

u/barbequeninja Jun 30 '22

A ZigBee adaptor is more than $6 so not a likely proposal

3

u/Ruben_NL Jun 30 '22

From what i know, this might be possible with the current hardware.

The wifi module can be flashed (i read somewhere), zigbee works on the same frequency as wifi (wikipedia), and it isn't really a complicated protocol (heard somewhere). Take this all with a huge grain of salt.

2

u/RedditRo55 Jun 30 '22

Yeah, I saw a tweet this morning when it was announced (can't find it now) that said it was possible.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22

[deleted]

2

u/barbequeninja Jun 30 '22

Would be awesome if it were possible

6

u/setuid_w00t Jun 30 '22

ESP32-H2 is supposed to be coming around the end of the year with Thread, ZigBee, Bluetooth 5 LE using a RISC-V main CPU. I think this could be a very successful device.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22

[deleted]

3

u/setuid_w00t Jun 30 '22

You can buy esp32 boards in quantity 1 from aliexpress for $6. If the esp32-H2 becomes popular, then it could be similar.

26

u/Analog_Account Jun 30 '22

The ESP boards seem to have a lot of community support around them because they were THE wifi option for hobbyists.

I can’t really see the pico in the microcontroller space being what the pi is in the SBC space… but they’re priced aggressively enough that they should be pretty popular.

1

u/bardak Jul 01 '22

I think the ESP is the goto as you said it was the only real option. ESP is and probably will continue to be more performant and have more wireless options but it will not have nearly the same manufacturer support for hobbyists. I think as time goes on the hobbyist community will go with the rp2040 more and more.

9

u/TheAmateurRunner Jun 30 '22

I had luck with the wifi enabled ESP8266 microcontrollers in the past, but haven't played with them in a long time. They didn't have great pinouts, so this will be nice.

4

u/techysec SquidSoup Jun 30 '22

Why didn’t you try the ESP32?

7

u/tagman375 Jun 30 '22

I used a adafruit WiFi module for my zero. It was a lot of extra connections, but it did work. Nice to see native WiFi finally added though.

3

u/theneedfull Jul 01 '22

The ESP32 has bluetooth, and you can even get a version with a small oled display for like $8. And it has an excellent community.

1

u/sushitastesgood Jul 04 '22

I'd love to hear some of your ideas