The Raspberry Pi is one of the smallest and cheapest mini computers you can buy. It has an HDMI port, USB ports and works with Ubuntu or other open source operating systems as a champion. The new Raspberry Pi Pico, on the other hand, is like the CPU of a more complex machine. By itself, it can’t do much, but with some add-ons, you can control robots, lights, and other DIY tricks.
The best? It costs only $ 4.
These things are not new. There are a lot of them Arduino microcontrollers for rapid prototyping, including those of Adafruit Ploma platform of boards and accessories. However, this is a novelty for RaspPi and is an interesting move, not only because it competes more firmly with Arduino, but also because it has the first Raspberry Pi foray into making its own chips. The board uses the new Raspberry Pi chip RP2040, consisting of an Arm Cortex-M0 + processor with 264 KB of internal RAM. It also supports Flash memory storage of up to 16 MB.
According to Raspberry Pi C.elevated Operant Oofficial James Adams, the company started work on its new chip in 2016. It runs on a 40 nm process and has dual cores, which is not common on such a cheap board.
Program it in C and MicroPython and connect sensors and displays to the small side conductors. It is powered by a USB port. You really can’t play Destruction (still), but you can use it for electronic experiments and other prototyping activities for which the Raspberry Pi is already famous. And according to Adams, it could be the first of a new line of silicon-powered tables from Raspberry Pi itself.
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