Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ board for hobbyists and power users alike
Richard Speed Thu 21 Jan 2021 // 07:00 UTC Share
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The Raspberry Pi team has announced its latest bit of hardware – the $4 microcontroller-class Raspberry Pi Pico.
Some 37 million Raspberry Pi computers have been sold to date, according to head honcho Eben Upton. And although hobbyists, educators, and industry pros have seen success in connecting the diminutive computer to the outside world, often the board is paired up with a microcontroller (something like an Arduino device springs to mind) to take care of analogue input, low-latency input/output or a low-power mode.
The power consumption of a dedicated microcontroller is dwarfed even by the power-sipping Pi Zero
The Raspberry Pi Pico is a tiny $4 microcontroller running off the company’s very own chip
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is designing its own chips
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Image: Raspberry Pi Foundation
The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s tiny computers can be used for anything from homemade cameras to cucumber sorters, and now, the group is branching out into microcontrollers and custom silicon. The Raspberry Pi Pico is the first step. It’s a new $4 microcontroller that’s smaller than the average Pi, features a custom chip powerful enough to be used in machine learning projects (according to The Raspberry Pi Foundation), and is on sale now.