The Raspberry Pi Pico WAS Overrated! But that changed!
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In this video we will be having a closer look at the first microcontroller board from Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi Pico. The board is 1.5 years old but back then I was convinced that it was overrated. But things changed and nowadays I think it is a good Arduino alternative. So let me show you how to use the board and what exactly happened that made me change my mind. Let's get started!
Websites which were shown/used in the video:
datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pi...
datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp...
datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pi...
www.raspberrypi.com/documenta...
www.raspberrypi.com/documenta...
www.raspberrypi.com/documenta...
github.com/earlephilhower/ard...
arduino-pico.readthedocs.io/e...
github.com/khoih-prog/RPI_PIC...
www.arduinolibraries.info/arc...
www.instructables.com/Raspber...
www.instructables.com/Arbitra...
www.breatharian.eu/hw/picovga/...
forum.arduino.cc/t/libraries-...
Thanks to Altium for sponsoring this video.
0:00 Why I think the Pico was Overrated!
1:24 Intro
2:00 General Overview of the Pico
3:43 Good Parts of the Pico
6:55 One Bad Thing about the Pico
8:01 Truly Great Stuff about the Pico
9:35 Verdict - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
"Back then" you completely missed the point of the Pico. It's a decently powerful board, not particularly special, BUT the price is the point. £3.00 for a powerful, easy to use microcontroller is big. Also, you were never limited to Micropython - there was a C/C++ sdk from day one. It completely blows the commonly used Arduino (Nano and Uno) out of the water. Andit only got better with Arduino IDE compatibility when that became available (something not available at first, but we knew it was coming from day one)
plus there are two arduino support libs, official uses mbed os, inofficial based on pi c/c++ sdk (earlephilhower/arduino-pico), so depending what libs you want to prog against you have two choices
i love the low price, but if i really need anything more powerful than a Nano i use a Teensy, the Teensy 4.1's power and speed just can't be beaten in the Arduino/MCU world, albeit it costs 8x more in my country
RP2040 price around 1$ or 0.8$ if in 250 pcs reel. Pretty cheap actually.
Yeah if anything it's the actual Arduino and clones which are overrated, with pico pi which is easier and esp32 which is more power both way cheaper than most of the clones
@@misham6547 i'd say the other way around, i don't like Python and only really know C++ so it needs to be accessible through C++ for me, to me it doesn't matter wether that is in Arduino or a similar IDE, but in price/perf it shits on all Arduino and ESP32 variants, other than that Pi Pico with C++/Arduino code or Platformio is now the best option, unless you need power then it's the Teensy 4.1
With the help of a second pico (with picoprobe installed) you can also add breakpoints and step through your running code. A big help for debugging more complex code.
Thanks for the tip :-)
I should had done that instead using a million print and sleeps so I have time to read the prints and follow the code.
@@marc-andreservant201 I don't have a Raspberry computer and being in stock was not a problem, but I'm not paying over 100 euro for a Zero (at least it was that price when I needed it), the 4 started near 200 euro
THAT... I would love to know more about.
Debugging is by far the most time consuming problem on any of my code.
@@TimSavage-drummer saw your unedited comment yesterday.. thanks for editing it. I m going to have a look.
I wouldn't sleep on the RP2040 C/C++ library and included CMake plugins. It's seriously well made and the documentation is a good read. Beyond that, I've yet to see anything in the affordable range that comes close to matching the power of the PIOs. I've been able to take complex timing interfaces I've done in the past on Blue Pills and convert them into PIO only programs. Those 9 instructions are insanely expressive and make it possible to implement something like QSPI in just a handful of operations.
The RP2040 is my favorite microcontroller to come out of this decade and it's going to be a tough match to beat.
I agree. The price and PIO are a game changer.
With Visual GDB it makes it so easy to use as well.
@@LittleRainGames I remember when it came out, people were saying it has no power and it's pretty useless. They didn't know.
Do you think it would be possible to make quadrature encoder interface with PIO?
there is an inofficial arduino version based on the c/c++ pi sdk
For development it's also worth considering platform IO with vs code to program it in C++ directly and get something less hackish than the Arduino compatibility layer.
One important thing to know when using the Arduino IDE with the Pico, is that, to my knowledge, it *doesn't* leverage the RP2040's fast floating point library (at least it didn't when I started playing around with it earlier this year). This is fine for many applications, and it's still way faster than a typical arduino, but switching to the C SDK does make those operations much, much faster. I tested this by running the same code, with a ton of floating point operations, compiled and uploaded via Arduino IDE, and via cmake/manual copy/paste, and IIRC it increased the cycles per second (running my entire program, not CPU cycles or FLOPS or anything) from something like 20-80k to 300k.
Not a very comprehensive test, but it noticeably smoothed out the stepper motor movement I also had running in that loop, and made the Pico exceptional for my application, rather than acceptable.
LOL @ 9:38 "... I think that the Pico truly became a good alternative over time...". Up to that point in the video, the Pico didn't change, but rather your knowledge and opinion if it changed. ;)
Software changed a lot though. First months programming the Pico was horrible and let to killing a few with a hammer. Poor Picos.
Thank you so much for sharing... I too was having the same noise problem but didn't know what to do..
I was using pico as a HID device for a joystick project...
I always learn something when I come to your channel, thanks!
Excellent job! Even I followed, so you did a great job of breaking down the Pico using the other MCUs as the comparison.
That is a great strategy for sharing the relative benefits/drawback for new tech because it draws on something that many of us are already familiar.
I'd be curious to know if the wifi Pico has the same power conditioning issue feeding the ADC (great job explaining that issue).
I found myself thinking that almost every sentence you uttered would represent about a day worth of my time googling or reading to come to the same conclusion as you.
As always, thank you very much for writing and cleaning subtitles.
If you want to measure ripple or transient, noise and amplitude when signal shape accuracy is important, you have to use spring on ground ring to make ground loop so small as possible. In 7:14 is typical example, how to not measure noise and ripple on SMPS supplies. When i did this last time, i catch 10× more higher values than reality was. Yeah, im sure that some noise will pass thru that tiny SMPS supply on board, but, are you sure, that this noise doesnt come from USB?
The first advantage I see with this over arduino is for various DIY flight controllers due to greater speed. I made a gyro stabilized active control for a rocket, and it had operating frequency of over 200Hz, with greater speed and memory, better flight control and less gyro drift should be achieved.
I was thinking about the flight controller benefits as well, because pico has 12 bit resolution. But seeing how noise can be an issue, I think it may cause some problems with accuracy.
Great video as always 👍
Thanks for sharing your expirences with All of us 👍😃
Wow the dual core code looks so much simpler than earlier stuff I looked at! Thanks for the update. Still not used mine yet but have an idea in mind driven by the available storage
The only disadvantage for me, with RP2040/Pico is the lack of an Ultra Low Power Domain, which results in a very lacking sleep functionality, and thus is unusable for battery powered projects, like sensor nodes
Great to see your new intro and hear you do the old outro "and I'll see you NEXT TIME". Haven't heard that one in a while.
Many thanks for the comprehensive review and comparison. Really a valuable when tinkering with this kind of boards.
The most impressive things with the Pico was that it existed. For the past years the other products have not existed. And that Pi foundation still did not charge a premium for it because the other companies messed up their manufacturing.
Hah, didn't think I'd see you here in the wild! :D
@@ChaonicMew Sometimes I just cant shut up. Haha .. or .. yeah... You get it
Honestly compared to other vendors, the rp2040/pico C++ sdk is awesome, the documentation amazing and really easy to understand, I would say it's no less complicated than seting up platformio
And the fact that the rp2040 is in stock is a major advantage
Documentation is really good on the rp2040. Especially compare to the horrible docs that almost all other manufacturers provide
I agree the Pico C/C++ SDK is amazing and easy to use
Yes the c++ SDK is great, and by far so much faster. Setting up the c++ user studio is not recommended for newbies though. All I know is that I will NEVER go back to Micropython. Lol
Yes! Came here to say this too. It's a very clear, clean API, and doesn't rely on cumbersome vendor tools. Compared to the STM32 HAL it's an absolute dream to work with.
Yeah but cmake. The SDK is good but platformjo with Arduino-pico core is in my opinion the best solution
Always a good great Explanation 👌
Thank you so much for putting in the GPIO 23 command for this! I could not for the life of me figure out why the pi pico’s ADC was so bad, and after I ran this command the ADC is as accurate as I need!
I like your videos, very detailed. I just saw your video about a DIY Oscilloscope. I also saw a simple plug-and-play Oscilloscope project with the Pico using a Smartphone as a display elsewhere. I wonder if it's possible to have the cheap Oscilloscope DIY revisited using Raspberry PI Pico but with the capability of measuring High Voltages with the ZMPT101B voltage sensor module and the SCT013 current sensor clamps for High Current. It should be interesting.
I mean I think one of the main advantages is the price. Getting a powerful, multi core microcontroller for $4, or $6 with wifi, is insane.
And also the fact it's actually procurable during the silicon -shortage- apocalypse
The wireless chip also supports Bluetooth, and with the new Pico SDK it's actually enabled in the drivers, so you also have Bluetooth LE now.
Thanks for this update. I wouldn't touch it when Python was the only option, but after watching your video I''ll have to try one out now.
I take psychic damage every time he refers to normal microcontrollers as "arduino alternatives"
Wow something that I wanted for my projects 😁 and I think sir you should build an oscilloscope with this for us as a project kit it would be very helpful for learning more complicated projects 😁. As always thank u 🙂 for such a detail video
I have to say that the neame of this channel fits very well with the content, you are really great !!!
Did you do nay evaluation to the Pico plus WiFi board? Looking forward to it.
I had tow laying around for more than a year but I used them both in the last two days and now I am in love with a new Microcontroller :D
Thanks for making amazing videos for us. 🇧🇩
Very nice little board indeed! Thanks for sharing it with us. Cheers!
This is all good news! I'm still a novice with my Arduino so I'm happy to hear the pico can be programmed similarly to the Arduino. Thank you!
Great video. When it was first released I was very underwhelmed due to the lack of WiFi. I decided to stay with my WEMOS devices. Now I may have to take a look at the Pico.
Yep. Really looking forward that WiFi gets integrated in the Arduino IDE and then everything is possible :-)
thank you for explaining it . now its approachable if we can programme it with Arduino IDE
You can also program it in C / C++.
The documentation is really good
Prefer it, but why don't they explain the command line commands used to compile and link up an executable image rather than relying on the cmake garbage?
@@andrewlankford9634 because C is a terrible language with terrible compilers that need to be coddled just so to work right, and humans basically can't use them directly.
Thanks for your tutorial. I see videos using the Pico to do electric drum. But have not seen some which is a standalone with display. Can you make one?
The teasing of inevitable in the ending is awesome mate
More Pico powered power electronics stuff yaaayyyyy !!!!!🤩
very helpful thank you
I have coding knowledge. But I don't have much electronics knowledge. Never used Arduino or Raspberry pi.
But I want to get into it for some fun projects I have in mind.
Any suggestions and tips how I should get started?
Wow - that looks like a pretty amazing board! Thank you for sharing!
Can you tell us a bit about the power consumption? E.g for a battery driven project?
Thanks
Is there an option to protect your code?
Like fusebits in Arduino?
I haven't found any.
Have you found any way to protect your projects?
Can you make videos on protocol/peripheral driver implementations using polling, interrupts and dma. This can be your new series😊😊. Love your videos ❤️
Maybe a bit too complicated for me. But I will see what I can do :-)
@@greatscottlab Sir i have learnt a lot from you and nothing is complicated for you that's what i know😅...
Thank you! Very informative! I think that there is no „the best board/microcontroller”! Each one has its own utility in certain areas! 🤔
I was impressed with the RP2040 right at the start because of the programmable IO which would lead to some amazing projects, notably driving HDMI monitors, audio applications using optical S/PDIF or ADAT, or other applications that would normally need an FPGA.
No Pico, so far, but did get the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect with at least a taste of Pico Pi, along with all sorts of onboard gizmos. Thank You for the Pico update!
Now, back to the Esp32 LoRa boards ... I just never realized how catching this MCU bug was going to be ...
i ordered some and will have a try in MicroPhyton
is there anywhere a list how long MicroPhyton commands need
Have you checked out the Arduino Connect board that uses the RP2040 chip. Built in wifi, BT, Accelerometer and a bunch more.
how well does the pico play with stepper motors? i'm building a project that allows manual control of a stepper motor to eventually move a Ferris wheel style attachment and need a more compact setup than using an arduino mega. control input is given using a 12 button keypad to enter the amount of steps the motor should move. i'm also using a nema 17 style stepper
hi nice video. can you connect the raspberry pi camera module 3 to Raspberry Pi Pico? if so what additional hardware i need?
Hi, I'm not sure where to put this so I'm posting it here but I think a auto transfer switch could be a cool idea for diy or buy since it is pretty useful.
Good point to show back compatibility with legacy projects. Danke.
Awesome Video! I loved it! For your next Arduino Alternative Video (Which will now probably be in a millennia since you just did one), can you try out the Seeduino Xiao Boards? Thanks!
I can put it on my to do list
@@greatscottlab Thanks
Hi, GreatScott, good video.
I have followed your steps to program Raspberry pi pico using Arduino IDE. The blank sketch also got uploaded successfully without selecting the port(Had to press and hold the boot select button when connecting to the PC, which you have not mentioned in your video). The problem is when I removed raspberry pi pico after the blank sketch upload and reconnect(Without pressing the boot select) it to the PC the PC shows the device as 'Arduino Pico' but can't create a COM Port, seems like the driver is not installed. Thus I can't select the port in arduino ide for the second upload and can't upload the sketch. Do I have to install any drivers for windows 8.1 for the pico to get recognized? Please help...
7:20 I wonder if you could solder a few external caps or something to smooth out that line. Or maybe even do some hardware hacking and swap the reference with an LDO
That was a good idea of soldering connectors on a solder-less lboard to get pins oriented correctly. I also moved away from Arduino IDE and have never looked back. Phyton with Thony is so much easier to program and understand.
I have to thank raspberry pi foundation for providing such useful resources around the RP2040 allowing me to make a clone of the pico with some nice to have changes like a linear regulator so there is no switching noise, top side GPIO labels and a reset button.
Would this be any good for a diy weighing scale ? Maybe you could do another diy or buy episode!
i've been watching you for years, your videos are way better than they used to be
The Pico is basically my ToGo Micropython/Circuitpython board.
The large flash and the high clockspeed are great for an interpreted language.
But for C++ I generally choose AVR or SamD chips.
Great Scott I have a serious question for you.....What type of pens do you use? I know I recognize them but don't remember what kind they are.
Thank you, I've wanted to buy one but wasn't sure if it was powerful enough and yes, micropython. I'm definitely reconsidering
Glad I could help!
To be fair the pico / rp2040 is firmware agnostic meaning you dont have to stick with micopython. Arduino support has been official for a while now and there is a lot of documentation for c/c++ and circuitpython too. Its worth reconsidering.
There's also a Rust HAL for the rp2040!
As someone with very little programming knowledge, I was put off using it as I was more familiar with Arduino, but even I was able to make a simple PIO assembly program to blink the LED in a few minutes with micropython.
The advantage of micropython (or circuitpython) is that they create a filesystem, so you can have multiple programs on the Pico (the one named main.py or boot.py starts on reset) which is great for breadboard prototyping, you don't need to reflash every time and you store the libraries you need on the Pico as well.
Check out the Teensy boards. I can't praise these things enough for how good they are while still being a micro.
I have absolutely no affiliation with PJRC.
Nice and interesting as always.
I’m super excited about this video 🔥
this intro is just amazing !!
I'm a little confused why you chose to compare the Raspberry Pi Pico to an arduino. It's been a while since I last did microcontroller things, but I was under the impression that the ESP family was the mark to beat, not the arduino family...
Agreed... the Great Scott missed the beat on this comparison... Comparing a board introduced in 2008 with the "late in the game" Raspberry Pi Pico doesn't make any sense... The ESP32-PICO-D4 introduced in 2014 still puts this Raspberry Pi Pico to shame today! This is just the Raspberry Pi Foundation trying to enter the MCU game (late) and capitalize on their SBC reputation.
What do you think about RP2040 vs ESP32? As I see RP2040 with WiFi like Nano RP2040 Connect is 6x times more expensive than ESP32.
What are the performance when comparing to the Arduino uno/nano/mini, especially with O2 or O3 optimizations into the compiler strings?
It's so much faster and has so many more peripherals - along with DMA and PIO units - there's no serious comparison. You might as well compare a wheelbarrow to an F1 car...
Great scott. it will b intresting if you make small bluetooth running only on 5v dc. which we charge battery. but without battery how to play. totally out no battery at all
so, will u switch to arduino IDE 2.0 ??
9 instructions?! That's 8 more than I need!
I was thinking about the use of ferrite bead noise filter design to diminsh the noise on analog inputs. With the implication of this you might no longer need to de-activate the PFM mode, therefore improve the efficiency. 7:38
I was confused by the first few minutes where you said you had to use python when there is no such restriction. It then became clear that it was not compatible with the Arduino IDE then the video made sense. Good video.
Can you please explain the cycloconverter and how to design one ?
Can it read from the outputs of a 555 circuit? Can it be connected to all pins to better "understand" what's going on with each analog component?
I made a led matrix scoller bar with a pico, using PIO. That little thing has some nice surprises on board.
can you fix the analog noise by useing a battery as power input directly to the 3v line ?
So the fuzz about the ADC is _not_ coming from the power conversion. I read that thread where somebody did a histogram of measured values and had some spikes for certain ADC values (see Errata 11 in the datasheet for the values). Those were the result of the wrong size of the internal capacitors used in their comparators.
Any chance you have a link to that thread? I’d love to read about it
@@caseysheridan6752 Late reply, but this is covered in the RP2040 datasheet.
I do genuinely believe the PIO's are THE single biggest benefit to a pico that really does put it into a different class and can really really add additional features that blow the arduino/esp boards out the water. Your VGA example I think proves that.... but kinda as you point out, PIO is a very advanced feature that the average hobbyist is unlikely to fully benefit from.
But given how commercial customers can now buy RP2040 chips standalone to integrate into things I think it bodes well for the 2040 ecosystem as a whole.
The Beaglebone had something similar to the PIO on a SBC way back in the day.
PIO also allows easy and cheap access to communications that previously required someone to know how to use an FPGA
It's incredibly useful for hacking and modding of things 😋
@@xenoxaos1 its definitely not a 'new' thing for sure, more that for the price point of the RP2040 its really targeting other microcontrollers and SBC's are a different market segment etc..
Its nothing new, more just new in the 'lower performance' end of the microcontroller market (lower performance is a relative term you know what I mean, I know its a very powerful chip, but we have to grade things somehow!) Meaning compared to its direct competition PIO is the most impactful and can mean, depending on sustem requirements, it wipes the floor in terms of which people would choose.
A friend of mine tried to buy several hundreds of RP2040 as commercial customer - no luck. Waiting time is indefinite.
" PIO is a very advanced feature that the average hobbyist is unlikely to fully benefit from." - why No! First of all you underestimate the average hobbyist and second of all, as more people who do want to design PIO routines they will share them with everyone else. This is not unlike how the average hobbyist makes their own keyboard controller with Arduino - someone already does the heavy lifting and they just have to tweak and craft the connections etc.
I haven't looked through the comments yet.. but on some uc's you can select the ADC reference voltage (to a DC voltage on a reference pin).
If you need less noise, you could create a reference off your DC supply. or even use an external voltage reference chip.
Still an odd choice to use switched power supply on board. In linear voltage regulators the efficiency is usually a function of the voltage difference between input an output terminal. So you should ideally not power your uc with a 12V DC power supply.
Nice vidéo 🔥
How about adding decoupling capacitors to that power supply?
If it has multiple frequencies at different loads, just decouple with different capacitors, a decade apart to have broad band decoupling.
I enjoy your videos, and this one in particular.
Glad you like them!
Have you tried coding with VS Code and arduino plugins for it?
Could you do a DIY mppt solar charge controller
The tiny "screen" flashing numbers was really cool.
The PIO is easily the best feature of the RP2040 in my opinion, and I hope the concept sticks around for a while and gets adopted by other chip designers.
It is incredibly useful to have those separate execution contexts where you can control GPIO with very precise timing without sacrificing time on the main thread.
The other day I discovered that someone has written a PIO program for USB FS signaling, and demoed it as both a host and device... Simply incredible
To sum up,
just put "digitalWrite(23, High)" on all your code.
Is that all? Is that simple? No missing?
Nice experiment 👍
Please post new project tutorials with raspberry Pi pico w..
Can it sense the input voltage so if you are using a lithium battery have it shut down at like 3v
Great video, thank you !!
Glad you liked it!
Great video!
Where can I find the feature comparison table that was shown at 0:37 ?
are you gonna make that new retro game console or did you sorta quit that
Is the pico w ADC any better?
Can you make an silent car alarm with lora long range and a device that you have at home and if the alarm is triggered in the car the device at home starts screaming.
Can we install Adguard Home or Pihole on it?
Can you please make a video about arduino 2.0?
Wow ten of these some coils a large capacitor , power tool battery a metal tube and you have a neat project .
The only thing lacking on the Pico is a set of 8/16 bit hardware timers that can be incremented with external or internal signals. Most other microcontrollers have that built-in.
You can do that with the PIOs.
Könntest doch PIO oder Arduino IDE V2 nutzen? Warum also Arduino IDE 1.X?