Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched the successor to final 12 months’s Pico, a microcontroller costing $4 based mostly on the RP2040 chip designed by the corporate. The new mannequin is known as the Pico W.
The Raspberry Pico W has the identical {hardware}, however provides an 802.11n WiFi radio, making it helpful for IoT tasks. It is barely costlier than the usual Pico, costing $6.
Explaining the rationale behind the 50% value hike, Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton informed The Verge that including radios to merchandise was costly. “Just the radio conformance for a modern Raspberry Pi product is the best part of half a million dollars,” he mentioned.
Raspberry Pi is, nevertheless, not discontinuing the $4 Pico mannequin.
Launched in January 2021, the Pico’s microcontroller incorporates two 133MHz Arm Cortex-M0+ CPU cores and 264 kb reminiscence. The low specs and value make it well-suited for single-purpose units that don’t require a lot processing energy.
The Pico varieties the idea for Internet-connected good units.
The firm mentioned it added wi-fi to the Pico utilizing the Infineon CYW43439 chip. The chip additionally helps Bluetooth, however the firm has not enabled it.
While there are equipment accessible to get a typical Pico connected to a community, they’re costlier and bulkier than having a built-in WiFi within the microcontroller itself. The Pico W may even be used as a drop-in substitute for a undertaking based mostly on a typical Pico.
Raspberry Pi has additionally introduced two different Pico merchandise — the Pico H and Pico WH. Both the merchandise are the identical because the Pico and the Pico W, respectively, however value $1 extra and include pre-attached pin headers and a debug connector.
The firm mentioned in a press launch that individuals trying to experiment with {hardware} had flocked to the Pico as the continued semiconductor scarcity made it troublesome to seek out chips.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”