this is the raspberry pi pico
microcontroller which was released by
the raspberry pi foundation back in
january of 2021
back then everyone was super excited
about this little board
because it was the first microcontroller
from raspberry pi
and not a single board computer for what
they are usually known for
and since my viewers know that i love
microcontroller projects and also
reviewed a couple of arduino
alternatives in the past the comment
section underneath my videos were
flooded with requests to make a video
about the pico
so i had a look at the main specs of the
board
compared it to my previously featured
arduino alternatives and came to the
conclusion that it is really nothing
special
and worst of all i would have to use
micropython to program it which i'm not
a fan of
that is why i ignored the board back
then and truly thought it was overrated
but now one and a half years later i
have to say that things changed
and now i think it is a pretty good
arduino alternative
so in this video i will not only show
you how to use this board
but also tell you the good stuff the one
bad thing and the really great stuff
about the board which made me change my
mind
let's get started
[Music]
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as of course the altrum designer by
simply following the link in the
description
to properly use the picot i of course
firstly threw it onto breadboards with
two mile headers and solder those in
place
afterwards i dug through the
documentation of the board in order to
find this pretty much mandatory pinout
diagram
it is mandatory because there are no pin
labels on the front side of the boards
unlike every other microcontroller board
i know
but anyway while studying the data sheet
of the sport and examining the pins
i found out that the pico offers a total
of 30 gpo pins of which certain ones
have a special function on the boards
and three can be used for analog inputs
with a 12 bit resolution
other than that it seems like every pin
can be used for creating pwm signals and
external interrupts
we got the usual communication
interfaces like i square c spi and uart
the board works with 3.3 volts instead
of 5 volts like the arduino does
and there are some power saving modes
included but those still draw quite a
bit of current
i think when only comparing these specs
then a standard arduino is honestly not
far behind
the only major advantages this bot
offers at first sight is its big memory
and at fast speeds
and that basically begged the question
for me why to switch over
since i would have to get comfortable
programming in micropython or with the c
c plus plus software development kit
they offer
but i wanted to continue programming
with the arduino ide
because i'm comfortable with it and
coded all my previous projects this way
and here actually starts the good parts
of the pico
because as it turns out there now exists
a raspberry pi pico arduino core
which you can easily integrate into the
arduino ide by just adding one url under
preferences and then simply searching
for the pico through the boards manager
after installing it you can choose the
pico board keep all the standard
settings in place hook up your actual
board to the computer and click uploads
after a few seconds the empty upload
should be done and your com port should
now be able to successfully detect the
pico port
now after i did this the first time i
started trying out all the common
arduino functions everyone is familiar
with
i began with a digital read input
through a push button and a digital out
through an led
and as you can see that worked out
perfectly fine
and the board even includes build and
pull up and pull down resistors for the
inputs
and the serial write function also
worked just like usual
next i tried creating a pwm signal the
classic way
which did also work but the frequency
with 1 kilohertz was quite low
so i did a bit of digging through the
documentation of this picot arduino core
and found out that you can actually set
the frequency and resolution by yourself
which allowed me to reach a pretty high
frequency with an still okay resolution
then i of course also tried out an
analog inputs to obviously read an
analog voltage
which seemed to work at first sight but
there certainly was some noise in the
measurement about which i will talk
about later
before that though i also tried out
external interrupts which as you can see
work like a charm
the only thing that was a bit more
complicated was utilizing the timers of
the pico
which is exactly why i made my life
easier by just using a pre-made timer
library
so all in all the basic arduino
functions which are important to me do
all work just fine
and best of all many arduino libraries
already received an update to also be
compatible with the pico
for example lighting up addressable leds
is easily possible with the help of the
adafruit neopixel library
or displaying a bit of text onto an
ssd1306 oleds was also no hassle after
updating the fitting library
so that basically means that a lot of
the code i created for previous arduino
projects
should be compatible with the pico
which is great news and makes it a good
replacement
now of course the pico also comes with
some small extras as well
like an integrated temperature sensor
you can use the two cores to let two
tasks run simultaneously
and you got an integrated real-time
clock
that means all should be goods right
well there is one bad thing
and that is the noisy analog inputs for
which the reason is not the analog to
digital converter but instead the power
supply of the boards
it is a switching power supply which
initially sounds great because it is
more efficient
but if we inspect the power line then we
can see that there's quite a bit of
switching noise
which after a bit of filtering is also
the reference voltage for the analog to
digital converter
now one way to decrease this noise is to
pull this gpio 23 higher through the
help of coat
and as you can see this truly does make
things a bit better because now the
switching regulator continuously pulses
its internal mosfets instead of only
occasionally pulsing it to top up the
output capacitor voltage
it is still not ideal though because for
that we would have to disorder a
resistor and insert our own reference
voltage
which is a bit of a hassle
and with the negative stuff out of the
way let's get to the truly great stuff
once again starting with the switch mode
power supply which is actually a bug
boost converter
because of that the pico works with an
input voltage between 1.8 volts to 5.5
volts
which is great news for battery-powered
projects
the next great thing are the pios of the
pico which are programmable inputs slash
outputs that can only do 9 instructions
but that is more than enough to emulate
certain interfaces like ice credes dpi
or vga
i even found a very promising looking
vga project on the internets
and replicated it to show you what the
small pico is all capable of
and i think if you're a better
microcontroller programmer than me
you will see many more power
speed advantages of the pico
because there are already people out
there building oscilloscopes with its
and even arbitrary waveform generators
so yeah it seems like the pico can be a
power hose for those who are a bit more
advanced
but for all of us who are not that
skilled
there is still the fantastic
documentation the raspberry pi
foundation did for this
in which they even admit their own flaws
like with the analog reference voltage i
told you about earlier
and the last great thing about the board
is that even in times of semiconductor
shortage you can still get it easily and
for fair price
so all in all i think that the pico
truly became a good arduino alternative
over time
and you might actually get to see it
more often in future videos
i mean the only thing missing is wi-fi
capability
to replace my esp boards from projects
but as you probably already heard
there's a new version of the pico
available with built-in wi-fi
so i'm very excited to hopefully use
that very soon
until then as always don't forget to
like share subscribe and hit the
notification bell
stay creative
and i will see you next time