Raspberry Pi released an improved version of its Pico 2 microcontroller board that has an inbuilt Wi-Fi chip.
The company disclosed the product offering on its official page seen by Newsng on Monday.
The new $7 Pico 2 W has a dual-core, dual-architecture processor clocked at 150MHz. When building for the microcontroller, you have the option of using two Arm Cortex-M33 cores or two open-hardware Hazard 3 RISC-V cores.
Experts claim that it’s a low-cost solution to control electrical equipment such as smart home appliances and robotics. Users will be able to securely send and receive data from remote sources using the new version, either via Bluetooth 5.2 or Wi-Fi 802.11n.
Unlike regular Raspberry Pi computers, microcontrollers do not have a full operating system. Your code executes immediately on the chip.
The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W may be programmed using the Pico C/C++ and MicroPython SDKs; however, you must use the Pico SDK’s development branch at this moment, and pico-examples can be compiled with the PICO_BOARD=pico2_w parameter.
The MicroPython port is still in development, although a recent MicroPython for Pico 2 W build is available on Google Drive.
The Pico 2 W has a wide range of potential applications, including smart home control that can connect to other devices (plugs, lights, etc.) via Wi-Fi, robotics, and scientific investigations.
It is now available to enthusiasts from a variety of sites for $7.00 for the board alone, $21 for a basic kit, and $31 for the beginning kit.
As of publication, the Pico 2 W is only available for preorder from one of Raspberry Pi’s approved vendors, although it can also be purchased from three others.
We earlier reported that Raspberry Pi and Sony have partnered to create the Raspberry Pi AI Camera module, which is available for $70.
