"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
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
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.
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.
@@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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
" 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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
i struggle with it so much... i've done some pretty advanced Arduino projects using arduino-makefile, but this rp2040 beats me every time i try to use it. The toolchain is so freaking complicated that I typically stop there... Would you be willing to help me out?
What's really impressive is that someone ported Doom to run on the standard Pico - just need some resistors and a few jumper wires to connect a VGA monitor, and keyboard input, and audio output :) I was not interested in it when Python was the only option, but now C++ can access PIOs it's really powerful.
@@Tracktark when it was first released there were no libs available for C++ and it was extremely annoying to burn the firmware. Sure the Pi foundation could do it because it’s their hardware and they had the tools. If you really were programming it in C++ since it came out you were alone. I bought one when it came out and left it on the shelf for months until the tools to program it in C++ became available 😁 (I refuse to use Python on microcontrollers).
@@Stabby666 Also, yeah it is annoying to burn the firmware manually, but if you have another pico laying around, you can put the Picoprobe firmware on it and use it not only as a debugger, but also to upload your programs without having to disconnect and reconnect it all the time
The chip, the RP2040, is $1. We plan on using 5+ on a board that has tons of I/O because it’s cheaper than an I/O expansion IC and it’s reliably available.
How do you bootstrap and clock them? Do you throw a tiny SPI flash at each one of them or does some other MCU bootstrap them one at a time by emulating a compatible SPI flash? Are you running a 12MHz clock signal to each of them as required for the BootROM's USB bootloader or is the terrible internal RC clock after some tuning good enough for your application?
@@vitalyl1327 There’s almost no supply for FPGAs and they are more expensive. And some of the same benefits of an FPGA can be replicated with the PIO feature of the RP2040 if needed. The different ICE40 ICs are $4-7 in bulk and a are out of stock or have less than a few K units available. A RP2040 is $1 without bulk ordering and 100K or more are available at any time. The big thing is that with how easy it is to program (and the documentation and community support), how cheap they are, how versatile they are, we might as well use RP2040s to replace all of our ICs.
@@Zed_Oud yes, forgot about the availability issue. Sitting on a stash of ice40s, so did not refill it for a while... There are small ice40 1k parts that are reasonably cheap (3-4£). Yes, PIOs are flexible, but still nowhere near as flexible as FPGAs for bit banging, so for me it is always a default choice.
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.
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...
Actually, there is one additional disadvantage to the Pico compared to the Arduinos and ESPs: it has no integrated EEPROM for storage of settings and such, however, you can add an I²C module for that, so this isn't really a deal-breaker.
I'd suggest taking a look at Files→Examples→LittleFS→FSUpload, which also contains instructions for how to set up a small filesystem in the flash (along with your code) to store settings, etc.
I use the rp-hal rust library for all my Pico projects. The only downside is that I have to unplug and plugin again each time I want to update the code. So I've a tendancy to create the code in micropython as testing is much faster then when I have a solid foundation I'll translate to rust and then compile. It can be a hassle but for battery powered projects rust helps with bat life.
I greatly prefer the ESP32. It’s also dual core, can support more RAM/storage, Even with completely custom designed ESP32 PCB boards that I build, it’s very easy to use them with the Arduino IDE, though for bigger projects I usually use ESP’s integrated development extension for VS code, it’s way more flexible than Arduino IDE.
I second that. The ESP32 is a great microcontroller, easily tops the Pico in terms of memory and cpu speed, and includes Wifi and Bluetooth (in the Wroom32 package). It's a bit more expensive, but it's only 2 bucks. VScode is great, but I am now using IntelliJ IDE. Both IDEs are several generations ahead of the Arduino IDE and are much more productive.
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?
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 solved it by using arduino-makefile and coding everything in neovim and it really worked well. Pico toolchain is really complicated and difficult to use... :(
My final thesis was on a pico, I programed it in C++ with exception handling, other than the low level, like the I/O, everything else is the basic C++, you can use classes and whatever the standard library offers. Can even dynamically allocate memory with the same syntax. ADC is trully not the best, but swithing to PWM mode, external reference (I needed one anyway for my DAC) and softvare help to reduce gain error it was acceptable. The best is the big RAM and the speed (can even be overclocked to 300 Mhz or 450Mhz if you don't use the flash), it can do something like 68Mhz SPI signal so even my big 240*320 16bit color display changed basically instantly. No clue how the display processed it as on oscilloscope the clock looked like I'm charging a capacitor, the PCB was not designed with high frequency in mind. Also the price, the ESP32 I managed to buy without waiting for China was 15 euro, while this thing was 4-5 euro and Arduinos are also cost more.
I saw a video where a guy uses sprintf from C versus cout from c++ with the same code and the C++ binary was almost twice the size... im no sure c++ is your friend either when it comes to microcontrollers
@@evanbarnes9984 For us there was a lot of project ideas for grabs, my was a transistor tester and identifier, it measure resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors. Even draw characteristic diagrams for transistor fully automatically.
@@mikejones-vd3fg I used the whole serial out for debugging, the whole idea was to make it work as a standalone device, the end result had like 4 cout, which was redundant. I used C++ for OOP, I would had given up on it if I would had to do the whole thing with structs and basic polymorphism, overloading. Also it depends on which mode it is compiled, I used minimal size which cuts out a lot of useless part, like debug info.
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
I always learn something when I come to your channel, thanks!
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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.
2040 is really the place where you see a ton of benefits getting away from just arduino code, it has a lot of cool stuff that you kinda need to get low level to use well
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
I had a project which relied on the ADC, and I never got a reliable read: testing running a line of switches through a cascade of different resistors, I was getting insane readings. As soon as I pressed a button, through one resistor the values went all over the place - and continued even after I fully removed all input wires other than power, for about 5-6 seconds until it calmed down. I don't know if my pico's ADC is bad but your noting of the ADC problems makes me think that it's just the pico being a pico!
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.
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. ;)
I have 2 pi pico w's and an esp32-s3-devkitC. I have not touch my uno in a while. I guess the only annoying thing for me is that in both models of boards they run on 3.3v which is sort of annoying but just a bit of extra circuitry to step it up. (Or just use an external power supply with some mosfets).
That is one thing about struggling early so as to be able to always code AVR's in C/C++, without so much abstraction. It never feels like much to make a switch. Arduino/Pico/Flipper Zero.. you name it. Can usually just change some of your own low level abstractions and definitions, as the protocols stay the same. Interacting with a shift register is still going to want the pins toggled in the same order. Sketch can scare people away from feeling confident in certain aspects in exactly the same way micro python can. Both can be wonderful tools for learning but should be stepping stones.
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.
What are your thoughts on the ESP32? I know that the older ICs had a brown-out problem but the newer ICs have had many fixes... Are they comparable to the PICO and others, and with WIFI?
@@Cracked1ce Pico has turned up as main processor in many commercial products while ESP32 seem absent. Many new 3D printer boards coming out with it while none for the EPS32, for whatever reason the ESP32 isn't seen as reliable enough product to be used.
@@backgammonbacon There are a ton of iot products built on the esp8266 and esp8285. the reason those products don't use an ESP32 is because the esp8266/85 is already powerful enough. And there are quite alot of esp32 products, they just aren't hobbyist projects turned into products
@@backgammonbacon There are a LOT of new products using the ESP32, I kow because I also design some of them :) Along with the 8266 etc it's been used for years.
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.
I've fallen in love with Python but I wish uPy had more features available already, the other day I found out they haven't even ported Enum yet and I'm like damn maybe I should just try Circuitpython instead
@@firstNamelastName-ho6lv I'm new to it all so I haven't had a chance to settle on anything, learning both at the same time has kind of been nice because it's helping me understand WHY both do what they do and the differences is giving me better perspective on how code encapsulation works in general
an enum lmao, you can solve that without an Enum class. Micropython is limited because well you can't never fit the entire python std library on 256kb.
I figured it out but I got spoiled on it before, I'm really starting to appreciate just how big code gets really fast when I don't have libraries invisibly doing all the work for me
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?
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.
another thing that i find really useful about the pico, not present in most arduinos is the HID capability, i think that on the arduino side its only present on the ones with the 32u4 and, i guess, the ones with the rp2040
The ESP32 boards, the STM32 "Giga", AT91 "Due" and the current generation of RA4M1 based UNO R4 Wifi/Minima are also HID capable. Man have they made a lot of a different boards since i first bought a Duemilanove... They even had a brief period where they made a Intel Curie based board. Back when Intel was trying to get into the MCU market. Its really just the old legacy generation of ATMega328 and the long deprecated ATMega2560 based boards that lack HID.
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
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.
Could not agree more. Also I think that once it gains popularity, there will be shortage of it like Raspberry SBCs shortage at the moment. The RPI foundation really has a history of not being able to satisfy the demands of DIYers.
You should look at the Teensy boards, they have absolutely killer specs across the lineup (speed, ram, io, analog, floating point ubit) and fill the gap between a Arduino Uno or STM32 and thr likes of a SOC such as a RasPi. The 4.1 rocks a 600mhz Arm Cortex-M7 with Ethernet pins headers. (Low power modes and sleep modes that sip power) The 3.6 is a bit more inline with the RasPi pico.. The boards also support soldering on extra ram and flash, as well has having built in SD card slots. Also they label the IO.
Would be more interesting typ see it compared to the esp32 instead of the reglar old arduino.. The esp32 is even more powerful, same price point and gives you wifi and BLE for all projects if you want it?
yea it would get absolutely destroyed by the esp32, to me it compares much more closely to an arduino than an esp32 its way to slow to go up against an esp32
Other channels have done this - the ESP32 has more raw processing power, plus i2s, BlueTooth etc, but the PIOs make some tasks more efficient on the Pico.
@@havocking9224 The PIOs allow for custom logic running separately to the main cores. This can be used, for example, to output an HDMI signal - something you cannot do with the ESP32. I'm not interested in a "this micro is better than that" fanboy stuff. I use both - along with Atmel, STM and Nordic chips in my work.
i have my pi pico w running a small web server, with which i can control the connected ws2812b rgb leds. only thing i might want to change in the future is make it compatible with alexa or google home stuff.
Some people have verry high expectations of a cheap $5 micro controller when fuel prices are $2.20 a litre five dollars for a micro controller is amazing prices and endless possibilities
An oscilloscope with a 12bit resolution ADC? Also, at 133Mhz how many cycles to capture a single sample? What kind of ADC does it have? Probably not a flash. I would say it'll probably give you a sampling rate in the Khz range, so pretty slow. I mean, it can help you get started, and it will teach you a lot about how the tool works. But, if you want to make a decent oscilloscope, you'll need an external ADC with a better resolution and find a way to increase your sampling speed, AND some way to store those samples in memory to pipe to the pico. At that point, you're better off using a regular RPi and creating a shield with all those components, and still, you would've spent more money than what you would spend buying a cheap oscilloscope. That's assuming of course you bought a really good ADC and not a cheap one. The cheap ones use good-old TTL instead of MOSFETs, so probably won't work at sampling rates
For those who want to use Arduino IDE and C++, but do not want the hassle of setting up earlephilhower's arduino-pico core, there is also the official Arduino Mbed OS RP2040 Boards option found in the Boards Manager tool. I've had no problems so far with version 3.n Another thing worth mentioning is that Pico board uses separate flash via QSPI should anyone think the RP2040 chip can be used on it's own (it only has room for bootloader).
Sehr erfreulich, dass auch der channel GREAT SCOTT bei dem PICO jetzt richtig einsteigt - und zwar bei dem Earle F Philhower Arduino Core . !!!!!!! Das wird einen richtigen Boost bringen. Looking forward for your new ARDUINO PICO series . There are a lot of PICO-FANS waiting for your technical expertise.
@@greatscottlab Als Dipl.-Ing. im Unruhestand mit den Hobbies Flightsimulation - physical computing und panel-building bin ich immer auf der Suche nach den besten MCUs, den besten Hardware-componenten UND den besten LIBRARIES. Und die wichtigen LIBRARY-Artisten wie BODMER mit TFT_eSPI haben den Wert des PICO auch schnell entdeckt und ihre Libraries angepasst. Toll, was man mit dem PICO und einem ILI9341 TFT alles zaubern kann - drawing direkt im framebuffer und Transfer der Grafikinhalte per DMA. Da kann man die anderen altbackenen Libraries ganz schnell vergessen. Alle großen Hardware-Veredler wie Adafruit und Sparkfun u.a. setzen auch auf den Arduino-Core von Earle F Philhower und haben die INNEREN WERTE des PICO schnell erkannt. AND THE BEST IS YET TO COME ! der PICO W oder auch piCOW genannt. Bin gespannt, was sie aus der piCOW alles technisch herausholen. Gruß aus der Pfalz.
The pico is really aimed at hard core programmers who are happy using c/c++ or even assembly language, those of us who started programming with the Sinclair ZX81 (and have never stopped) have no difficulty with the special features, which is where the RP2040 comes into it's own.
The pins *are* labelled on the Pico Pi, on the underside of the board. Not exactly the most intuitive place to find it. But, yes a printout of the pinout is a good idea.
If you solder the pins to the "top" side of the board i.e. use the board upside down you can see all the pin labels. The BOOTSEL is not reachable but is not needed for most operations and can be accessed on TP6. Don't press the board down too hard otherwise the button could be squeezed when installed in a pin board. The LED on GPIO25 is not visible but the signal appears on TP5 so could easily be modified if desired.
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 ...
"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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
i struggle with it so much... i've done some pretty advanced Arduino projects using arduino-makefile, but this rp2040 beats me every time i try to use it. The toolchain is so freaking complicated that I typically stop there... Would you be willing to help me out?
What's really impressive is that someone ported Doom to run on the standard Pico - just need some resistors and a few jumper wires to connect a VGA monitor, and keyboard input, and audio output :) I was not interested in it when Python was the only option, but now C++ can access PIOs it's really powerful.
When was python the only option? I was programming the pico in c and c++ since it came out. Even the MicroPython running on the pico is a c++ binary
@@Tracktark when it was first released there were no libs available for C++ and it was extremely annoying to burn the firmware. Sure the Pi foundation could do it because it’s their hardware and they had the tools. If you really were programming it in C++ since it came out you were alone. I bought one when it came out and left it on the shelf for months until the tools to program it in C++ became available 😁 (I refuse to use Python on microcontrollers).
@@Stabby666 Also, yeah it is annoying to burn the firmware manually, but if you have another pico laying around, you can put the Picoprobe firmware on it and use it not only as a debugger, but also to upload your programs without having to disconnect and reconnect it all the time
@@Tracktark Yeah, if I'd had two of them it probably would have been different 🤣
@@Stabby666 They are cheap so no reason to not have two!
The chip, the RP2040, is $1.
We plan on using 5+ on a board that has tons of I/O because it’s cheaper than an I/O expansion IC and it’s reliably available.
wow, a uC is cheaper than an I/O expansion IC :D
That is quite backwards!
How do you bootstrap and clock them? Do you throw a tiny SPI flash at each one of them or does some other MCU bootstrap them one at a time by emulating a compatible SPI flash? Are you running a 12MHz clock signal to each of them as required for the BootROM's USB bootloader or is the terrible internal RC clock after some tuning good enough for your application?
Why not a small FPGA (e.g., ice40)?
@@vitalyl1327 There’s almost no supply for FPGAs and they are more expensive. And some of the same benefits of an FPGA can be replicated with the PIO feature of the RP2040 if needed.
The different ICE40 ICs are $4-7 in bulk and a are out of stock or have less than a few K units available. A RP2040 is $1 without bulk ordering and 100K or more are available at any time.
The big thing is that with how easy it is to program (and the documentation and community support), how cheap they are, how versatile they are, we might as well use RP2040s to replace all of our ICs.
@@Zed_Oud yes, forgot about the availability issue. Sitting on a stash of ice40s, so did not refill it for a while... There are small ice40 1k parts that are reasonably cheap (3-4£). Yes, PIOs are flexible, but still nowhere near as flexible as FPGAs for bit banging, so for me it is always a default choice.
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.
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...
Actually, there is one additional disadvantage to the Pico compared to the Arduinos and ESPs: it has no integrated EEPROM for storage of settings and such, however, you can add an I²C module for that, so this isn't really a deal-breaker.
I'd suggest taking a look at Files→Examples→LittleFS→FSUpload, which also contains instructions for how to set up a small filesystem in the flash (along with your code) to store settings, etc.
I use the rp-hal rust library for all my Pico projects. The only downside is that I have to unplug and plugin again each time I want to update the code. So I've a tendancy to create the code in micropython as testing is much faster then when I have a solid foundation I'll translate to rust and then compile. It can be a hassle but for battery powered projects rust helps with bat life.
I greatly prefer the ESP32. It’s also dual core, can support more RAM/storage, Even with completely custom designed ESP32 PCB boards that I build, it’s very easy to use them with the Arduino IDE, though for bigger projects I usually use ESP’s integrated development extension for VS code, it’s way more flexible than Arduino IDE.
I second that. The ESP32 is a great microcontroller, easily tops the Pico in terms of memory and cpu speed, and includes Wifi and Bluetooth (in the Wroom32 package). It's a bit more expensive, but it's only 2 bucks.
VScode is great, but I am now using IntelliJ IDE. Both IDEs are several generations ahead of the Arduino IDE and are much more productive.
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?
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
The Arduino IDE was the first things that started my move away from the Arduino "ecosystem".
For sure its crappiest IDE ever (from modern ones)
Even calling it an "IDE" is too much IMO
I solved it by using arduino-makefile and coding everything in neovim and it really worked well. Pico toolchain is really complicated and difficult to use... :(
My final thesis was on a pico, I programed it in C++ with exception handling, other than the low level, like the I/O, everything else is the basic C++, you can use classes and whatever the standard library offers. Can even dynamically allocate memory with the same syntax.
ADC is trully not the best, but swithing to PWM mode, external reference (I needed one anyway for my DAC) and softvare help to reduce gain error it was acceptable.
The best is the big RAM and the speed (can even be overclocked to 300 Mhz or 450Mhz if you don't use the flash), it can do something like 68Mhz SPI signal so even my big 240*320 16bit color display changed basically instantly. No clue how the display processed it as on oscilloscope the clock looked like I'm charging a capacitor, the PCB was not designed with high frequency in mind.
Also the price, the ESP32 I managed to buy without waiting for China was 15 euro, while this thing was 4-5 euro and Arduinos are also cost more.
I saw a video where a guy uses sprintf from C versus cout from c++ with the same code and the C++ binary was almost twice the size... im no sure c++ is your friend either when it comes to microcontrollers
I'm really curious what your thesis project was! I'm considering grad school for something like embedded systems
@@evanbarnes9984 For us there was a lot of project ideas for grabs, my was a transistor tester and identifier, it measure resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors. Even draw characteristic diagrams for transistor fully automatically.
@@mikejones-vd3fg I used the whole serial out for debugging, the whole idea was to make it work as a standalone device, the end result had like 4 cout, which was redundant. I used C++ for OOP, I would had given up on it if I would had to do the whole thing with structs and basic polymorphism, overloading.
Also it depends on which mode it is compiled, I used minimal size which cuts out a lot of useless part, like debug info.
@@jonnypista52 It the project available somewhere? It sounds really interesting.
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
Where can I find the feature comparison table that was shown at 0:37 ?
I have to say that the neame of this channel fits very well with the content, you are really great !!!
I always learn something when I come to your channel, thanks!
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.
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.
As always, thank you very much for writing and cleaning subtitles.
To sum up,
just put "digitalWrite(23, High)" on all your code.
Is that all? Is that simple? No missing?
2040 is really the place where you see a ton of benefits getting away from just arduino code, it has a lot of cool stuff that you kinda need to get low level to use well
9 instructions?! That's 8 more than I need!
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
I had a project which relied on the ADC, and I never got a reliable read: testing running a line of switches through a cascade of different resistors, I was getting insane readings. As soon as I pressed a button, through one resistor the values went all over the place - and continued even after I fully removed all input wires other than power, for about 5-6 seconds until it calmed down. I don't know if my pico's ADC is bad but your noting of the ADC problems makes me think that it's just the pico being a pico!
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.
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.
I have 2 pi pico w's and an esp32-s3-devkitC. I have not touch my uno in a while. I guess the only annoying thing for me is that in both models of boards they run on 3.3v which is sort of annoying but just a bit of extra circuitry to step it up. (Or just use an external power supply with some mosfets).
That is one thing about struggling early so as to be able to always code AVR's in C/C++, without so much abstraction. It never feels like much to make a switch.
Arduino/Pico/Flipper Zero.. you name it. Can usually just change some of your own low level abstractions and definitions, as the protocols stay the same.
Interacting with a shift register is still going to want the pins toggled in the same order.
Sketch can scare people away from feeling confident in certain aspects in exactly the same way micro python can. Both can be wonderful tools for learning but should be stepping stones.
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.
What are your thoughts on the ESP32? I know that the older ICs had a brown-out problem but the newer ICs have had many fixes... Are they comparable to the PICO and others, and with WIFI?
ESP32 blows the pico out of the water as far as specs. But pico has a larger community behind it since it is raspberry
@@Cracked1ce Pico has turned up as main processor in many commercial products while ESP32 seem absent. Many new 3D printer boards coming out with it while none for the EPS32, for whatever reason the ESP32 isn't seen as reliable enough product to be used.
@@backgammonbacon There are a ton of iot products built on the esp8266 and esp8285. the reason those products don't use an ESP32 is because the esp8266/85 is already powerful enough. And there are quite alot of esp32 products, they just aren't hobbyist projects turned into products
@@backgammonbacon There are a LOT of new products using the ESP32, I kow because I also design some of them :) Along with the 8266 etc it's been used for years.
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.
so, will u switch to arduino IDE 2.0 ??
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.
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!
But now the more pressing question is, does the Pico W replace the esp32?
Would love to see a follow up video on this @GreatScott!
The Pico can also act as a HID (Human Interface Device) which is a nice feature that is found on some but certainly not all Arduino compatible boards.
I wonder if the Pico can replace nice nano's, way over my head, so I guess I have a lot of learning to do!
Great video as always 👍
Thanks for sharing your expirences with All of us 👍😃
I've fallen in love with Python but I wish uPy had more features available already, the other day I found out they haven't even ported Enum yet and I'm like damn maybe I should just try Circuitpython instead
Dude circuitpython on VS code has been really good, but I'm thinking of switching to c++ for my use case.
@@firstNamelastName-ho6lv I'm new to it all so I haven't had a chance to settle on anything, learning both at the same time has kind of been nice because it's helping me understand WHY both do what they do and the differences is giving me better perspective on how code encapsulation works in general
an enum lmao, you can solve that without an Enum class. Micropython is limited because well you can't never fit the entire python std library on 256kb.
I figured it out but I got spoiled on it before, I'm really starting to appreciate just how big code gets really fast when I don't have libraries invisibly doing all the work for me
Isn't uPy still lacking interrupts? I saw that a while ago and didn't even bother trying it out even though python is my language of choice for PC.
Can you tell us a bit about the power consumption? E.g for a battery driven project?
Thanks
Do you think a pico could run a 256px LED array like the unicorn hat HD?
Did you do nay evaluation to the Pico plus WiFi board? Looking forward to it.
Many thanks for the comprehensive review and comparison. Really a valuable when tinkering with this kind of boards.
The PicoVGA is a great proyect. I'm doing a long learning session of it.
Have you checked out the Arduino Connect board that uses the RP2040 chip. Built in wifi, BT, Accelerometer and a bunch more.
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?
If you power the PICO from a regulated 3.3v supply directly to the 3.3v pin, it should solve the ADC noise problem.
Also possible....I think
i think on errata datasheet describe another problem noise on some points maybe 🤔
Always a good great Explanation 👌
What's really missing for me is still a 12bit DAC. I would gladly give up some of the memory to have a DAC included.
Im currently hesitating between this and a stm32 with an integrated dac for it..
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.
Would this be any good for a diy weighing scale ? Maybe you could do another diy or buy episode!
another thing that i find really useful about the pico, not present in most arduinos is the HID capability, i think that on the arduino side its only present on the ones with the 32u4 and, i guess, the ones with the rp2040
The ESP32 boards, the STM32 "Giga", AT91 "Due" and the current generation of RA4M1 based UNO R4 Wifi/Minima are also HID capable.
Man have they made a lot of a different boards since i first bought a Duemilanove... They even had a brief period where they made a Intel Curie based board. Back when Intel was trying to get into the MCU market.
Its really just the old legacy generation of ATMega328 and the long deprecated ATMega2560 based boards that lack HID.
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
It should play well
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
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.
I would love to see a proper video on the pio state machines as Id like to use them but Im not sure where to begin
I will see what I can do ;-)
@@greatscottlab thank you
Could not agree more. Also I think that once it gains popularity, there will be shortage of it like Raspberry SBCs shortage at the moment. The RPI foundation really has a history of not being able to satisfy the demands of DIYers.
Could you do a DIY mppt solar charge controller
You should look at the Teensy boards, they have absolutely killer specs across the lineup (speed, ram, io, analog, floating point ubit) and fill the gap between a Arduino Uno or STM32 and thr likes of a SOC such as a RasPi.
The 4.1 rocks a 600mhz Arm Cortex-M7 with Ethernet pins headers. (Low power modes and sleep modes that sip power)
The 3.6 is a bit more inline with the RasPi pico..
The boards also support soldering on extra ram and flash, as well has having built in SD card slots. Also they label the IO.
I love the teensy boards and their libraries, but they are really too expensive to get in the EU.
Would be more interesting typ see it compared to the esp32 instead of the reglar old arduino.. The esp32 is even more powerful, same price point and gives you wifi and BLE for all projects if you want it?
yea it would get absolutely destroyed by the esp32, to me it compares much more closely to an arduino than an esp32 its way to slow to go up against an esp32
Pico has WIFI and the chipset for WIFI supports BT and it has been confirmed that BT will make its way on board eventually
@@SirTodd pico has WiFi for over a year now
@@NSK. true. Thx
It will be great if you make a comparison video between Raspberry Pi Pico W and ESP 32.
They both have WiFi and quite popular.
Isign under this, that would be very educational, esp32 is impressive.
Other channels have done this - the ESP32 has more raw processing power, plus i2s, BlueTooth etc, but the PIOs make some tasks more efficient on the Pico.
@@Stabby666 "more efficient" - faster? Less delay? I know just that analog reading is unstable and while using WiFi its catastrophe.
@@havocking9224 The PIOs allow for custom logic running separately to the main cores. This can be used, for example, to output an HDMI signal - something you cannot do with the ESP32. I'm not interested in a "this micro is better than that" fanboy stuff. I use both - along with Atmel, STM and Nordic chips in my work.
@@Stabby666 i am just amateur at programming and i've never needed such potential as HDMI....anyway thanks!
can you fix the analog noise by useing a battery as power input directly to the 3v line ?
I think that we are going to see the Pico, or something very close to it, used in a lot of "smart appliances" with all of that GPIO and low cost.
Cheap microcontrollers are already used in that sort of thing all the time
why would you want to use the arduino IDE if you have their own system that also supports C/C++???
Can you please explain the cycloconverter and how to design one ?
can you please explain the working of HCPL-A316J circuit
i have my pi pico w running a small web server, with which i can control the connected ws2812b rgb leds. only thing i might want to change in the future is make it compatible with alexa or google home stuff.
Sounds like fun :-)
@@greatscottlab i had all of the actual led controls built for an arduino clone, then the pico w came out and i had to try it.
Some people have verry high expectations of a cheap $5 micro controller when fuel prices are $2.20 a litre five dollars for a micro controller is amazing prices and endless possibilities
An oscilloscope with a 12bit resolution ADC? Also, at 133Mhz how many cycles to capture a single sample? What kind of ADC does it have? Probably not a flash. I would say it'll probably give you a sampling rate in the Khz range, so pretty slow.
I mean, it can help you get started, and it will teach you a lot about how the tool works. But, if you want to make a decent oscilloscope, you'll need an external ADC with a better resolution and find a way to increase your sampling speed, AND some way to store those samples in memory to pipe to the pico. At that point, you're better off using a regular RPi and creating a shield with all those components, and still, you would've spent more money than what you would spend buying a cheap oscilloscope. That's assuming of course you bought a really good ADC and not a cheap one. The cheap ones use good-old TTL instead of MOSFETs, so probably won't work at sampling rates
For those who want to use Arduino IDE and C++, but do not want the hassle of setting up earlephilhower's arduino-pico core, there is also the official Arduino Mbed OS RP2040 Boards option found in the Boards Manager tool. I've had no problems so far with version 3.n
Another thing worth mentioning is that Pico board uses separate flash via QSPI should anyone think the RP2040 chip can be used on it's own (it only has room for bootloader).
Sehr erfreulich, dass auch der channel GREAT SCOTT bei dem PICO jetzt richtig einsteigt - und zwar bei dem Earle F Philhower Arduino Core . !!!!!!! Das wird einen richtigen Boost bringen.
Looking forward for your new ARDUINO PICO series . There are a lot of PICO-FANS waiting for your technical expertise.
Thanks for the feedback :-)
@@greatscottlab Als Dipl.-Ing. im Unruhestand mit den Hobbies Flightsimulation - physical computing und panel-building bin ich immer auf der Suche nach den besten MCUs, den besten Hardware-componenten UND den besten LIBRARIES. Und die wichtigen LIBRARY-Artisten wie BODMER mit TFT_eSPI haben den Wert des PICO auch schnell entdeckt und ihre Libraries angepasst. Toll, was man mit dem PICO und einem ILI9341 TFT alles zaubern kann - drawing direkt im framebuffer und Transfer der Grafikinhalte per DMA.
Da kann man die anderen altbackenen Libraries ganz schnell vergessen.
Alle großen Hardware-Veredler wie Adafruit und Sparkfun u.a. setzen auch auf den Arduino-Core von Earle F Philhower und haben die INNEREN WERTE des PICO schnell erkannt.
AND THE BEST IS YET TO COME !
der PICO W oder auch piCOW genannt. Bin gespannt, was sie aus der piCOW alles technisch herausholen. Gruß aus der Pfalz.
The teasing of inevitable in the ending is awesome mate
More Pico powered power electronics stuff yaaayyyyy !!!!!🤩
i've been watching you for years, your videos are way better than they used to be
The pico is really aimed at hard core programmers who are happy using c/c++ or even assembly language, those of us who started programming with the Sinclair ZX81 (and have never stopped) have no difficulty with the special features, which is where the RP2040 comes into it's own.
and Arduino support which requies usb flashing
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?
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?
Are there any microcontrollers operating higher than 5 volts?
Thanks for making amazing videos for us. 🇧🇩
Can you please make a video about arduino 2.0?
Why you're not using PlatformIO with VSCode amazes me. Compile times are much lower. And its just better as an IDE.
The pins *are* labelled on the Pico Pi, on the underside of the board. Not exactly the most intuitive place to find it. But, yes a printout of the pinout is a good idea.
If you solder the pins to the "top" side of the board i.e. use the board upside down you can see all the pin labels. The BOOTSEL is not reachable but is not needed for most operations and can be accessed on TP6. Don't press the board down too hard otherwise the button could be squeezed when installed in a pin board. The LED on GPIO25 is not visible but the signal appears on TP5 so could easily be modified if desired.
What's the purpose of RTC if it doesn't have onboard battery?
PIC Microcontroller is my first Love... No matter what...
So, what hardware changed on the Pico? I must have missed that part.
Have you tried coding with VS Code and arduino plugins for it?
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 ...