The Raspberry Pi devices never cease to amaze me in terms of their functionality, pricing, and capabilities. These devices are mostly used for building tiny computers, miniature home arcades, or other open-source projects which can range from making music, games, or even digital art. Recently, they have released a new product: Raspberry Pi Pico, which is a super tiny computer that now has wireless connectivity features! For more interesting computer news like this one, be sure to read our articles.
Essentially the Raspberry Pi Pico is a powerful, flexible microcontroller board that has all of the functionality required to code lots of different features in it. The dimensions for this microcontroller are 21mm x 51mm, fun-sized as you can see. Don’t be fooled by these tiny dimensions though as you’ll see just how much functionality can fit into that tiny package.
Image source: Raspberry Pi Website
The Raspberry Pi Pico packs a Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor, a 2MB on-board QSPI flash, one USB 1.1 controller, and PHY, with host and device support, as well as eight Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support. For a more detailed specification list, you should check out the Raspberry Pi website.
One of the more interesting new additions to this new model is its ability to connect wirelessly to networks. As it is stated on their website “Network your Pico for a complete IoT solution. Raspberry Pi Pico W comes with a fully certified module on board featuring 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless LAN, making it the perfect solution for loT applications and projects requiring wireless communication.” Funny thing is, this feature bumps the pricing of the product a little bit. Originally the starting price for the Raspberry Pi Pico is $4, while the wireless connectivity option bumps the price up to $6. It’s funny to think that this is essentially a 50% bump in the price, but in reality, you’re just paying $2 extra which according to Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton, that price hike went straight to incorporating the new feature. And what a feature it is, allowing for data transfers to be done without much effort from the user’s perspective.
I know that one of the more interesting questions that are on everyone’s mind is: “What games can we play on this thing?” Raspberry Pi devices are oftentimes used for emulation and are the main drivers of tiny home arcades and many other small gaming handheld devices. So, we know for sure that this device as well will be able to run a plethora of games. More so, if you have any interest in becoming a game developer, or want to code games just as a hobby, they have an entire catalog of simple games that you can learn how to code with text and video tutorials.
This gives you the chance of learning simple coding for the Raspberry Pi Pico as an added bonus. If you’re not into coding games yourself just know that there is a library of games available for this device.
Image source: Raspberry Pi Website
Conclusively, the new additions to this already amazing Raspberry Pi device are welcomed, even though it does increase its price by 50% funnily enough. Wireless connectivity will now be available for anyone who needs it and just like any other Raspberry Pi product, you’ll be able to code numerous interesting projects for this marvelous and tiny device.