The New Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Has Wi-Fi

Raspberry Pi has created a Wi-Fi-enabled version of its recently released Pico 2 dual-architecture board for just $2 more.

Raspberry Pi is best known for its Linux-based single-board computers, but the company also makes cheaper programmable microcontrollers in its Pico range. Now, the company has unveiled an updated version of its Pico 2 board, released in August. It uses an improved chip running at 150MHz that made its debut in the original Pico as Raspberry’s first in-house chip with a dual-architecture design, which lets you flip between the ARM and RISC-V CPU architectures.

The new boards support the power-sipping Bluetooth 5.2 standard and come in two versions, with or without Wi-Fi. However, only the 2.4GHz wireless band is supported using the Wi-Fi 4 protocol (802.11n), not the speedier 5GHz one. If you’re building smart home projects, 2.4GHz Wi-Fi is the way to go. While slower than 5GHz Wi-Fi, the 2.4GHz signal penetrates walls and other obstacles much further.

The new board is powered by the tried-and-tested RP2350 microcontroller, which can run custom code directly. Yoy can write your code in popular programming languages such as C, C++, and MicroPython, a version of Python designed to run on microcontrollers.

When writing code for the microcontroller, you can choose between a pair of ARM Cortex-M33 cores or two open-hardware Hazard 3 RISC-V cores, jumping into either one at boot time or selecting an appropriate one when developing code to run on the microcontroller. In other words, you’re not forced to choose the ARM version over the RISC-V one and vice versa. Your code is stored in 4 MB of onboard flash storage. The RISC-V architecture is an open alternative to ARM and x86 which follows the established Reduce Instruction Set Computer (RISC) principles. Applications built for the RISC-V architecture can be simple and power-efficient.

The new Pico 2 W is fully backward compatible with existing Pico hardware and software. You can purchase your Pico 2, with the Wi-Fi version priced at $7 and the non-Wi-Fi version priced at $5, from one of Raspberry Pi’s preferred retailers listed on the official website.

Source: Raspberry Pi