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Raspberry Pi Foundation Launches $4 Microcontroller With Custom Chip (techcrunch.com) 145

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico, a tiny little microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects with some code running on the microcontroller. Even more interesting, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is using its own RP2040 chip, which means that the foundation is now making its own silicon. From a report: If you're not familiar with microcontrollers, those devices let you control other parts or other devices. You might think that you can already do this kind of stuff with a regular Raspberry Pi. But microcontrollers are specifically designed to interact with other things. They're cheap, they're small and they draw very little power. You can start developing your project with a breadboard to avoid soldering. You can pair it with a small battery and it can run for weeks or even months. Unlike computers, microcontrollers don't run traditional operating systems. Your code runs directly on the chip.

Like other microcontrollers, the Raspberry Pi Pico has dozens of input and output pins on the sides of the device. Those pins are important as they act as the interface with other components. For instance, you can make your microcontroller interact with an LED light, get data from various sensors, show some information on a display, etc. The Raspberry Pi Pico uses the RP2040 chip. It has a dual-core Arm processor (running at 133MHz), 264KB of RAM, 26 GPIO pins including 3 analog inputs, a micro-USB port and a temperature sensor. It doesn't come with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And it costs $4.
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Raspberry Pi Foundation Launches $4 Microcontroller With Custom Chip More

Raspberry Pi Foundation Launches $4 Microcontroller With Custom Chip

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  • Wow! (Score:2)

    by pele ( 151312 )

    And this competes with an esp32/wroom32 module how exactly?

    • Well, it is a less capable board for less $. Plus, the pi foundation has a much better PR team than Espressif.

      • An ESP32 is under $4 [aliexpress.com] for a complete development board, shipped.

        The CPU sounds a bit weaker with way less memory, and no WiFi/BT of course. The latter isn't necessary for all projects but made a huge difference in practice to the kind of things you can do. You can control things remotely without having to add a screen and buttons to everything, and even reflash it through an OTA update. The documentation and behavior is sometimes a bit sketchy but generally I haven't had any major issues.

        It's big upgrade ove

    • Exactly. And the next ESP32 is rumoured to have a RISC-V on board in place of the Tensilica.

  • Missing comment (Score:3)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @11:53AM (#60973632) Journal
    I was expecting someone to say "No wireless. Less space than a ESP32. Lame."

    • Re: Missing comment (Score:2, Informative)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

      > no wireless

      Good. >:-[

      It's a microcontroller. Not a CPU.
      The wireless chip *itself* is a microcontroller.
      It isn't the format with the resources to keep standard wireless tech even remotely secure.

  • But WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stevenm86 ( 780116 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @11:57AM (#60973644)
    The RPi filled a gap in accessibility for small / embedded computers, but no such gap exists in the microcontroller space. Today, you can't throw a breadboard these days without hitting something that ends in -duino. The chips, the boards, the cheapo breakouts, the tools, the libraries, and the users, are all out there. What does an RPi MCU bring to the table? ST and Microchip have very comparable offerings, and at least ST has some excellent tools and middleware. They'll give you a HAL and a Makefile, for crying out loud. What does a player like RPi have to contribute to this space? It's this really a good use of their resources?

    • Re:But WHY? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:04PM (#60973676)
      ST, MCP and Espressif are looking to sell chips. Their offerings are targeted at integrators producing 10K-1M devices. RPi is not a IC company, they are very education oriented. I think that what they can provide is a good audience of educators that can put MCUs into the hands of 10-12 year old students. If they can produce quality materials for classes of this sort, in a wide set of languages, this is a good use of their talents.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "this is a good use of their talents"

        Is it though? Because they could apply their same "talents" while using off-the-shelf hardware that is superior to this. Producing an inferior board is not a good use of their ability to put boards in the hands of 10-12 year old students, and those students would be better served by better hardware than this. For the same money, those students could have twice the processor power, twice the memory plus BT and WiFi if only those talents were applied to an existing MCU

      • like what is the point of differentiating between a microcontroller and the pi zero w. for students who are just writing micropython or stripped down C it makes no difference what chips are on the board.

    • Re:But WHY? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:19PM (#60973748) Homepage Journal

      They bring a few things to the table.

      The MCU itself has some nice features like the programmable I/O. Some other MCUs have something similar but this seems more advanced and useful.

      It's also cheap, and because they know they will get volume production they can offer more performance for the money. As you say there are a lot of Arduino clones, which means they all have lower volume and worse price/performance ratio.

      They also bring community and dev tools. Most other ARM platforms are a mixture of crappy code libraries and proprietary, non-free IDEs with little support if you don't use them.

      Arduino has community but has kind of reached the limits of what the platform can really do, due to be highly simplified. It looks like they have made a lot more power available with the new RPi MCU, and unlike the usual badly supported and bug ridden libraries that come with most ARM MCUs there is a decent chance that theirs will be more like the half decent ones for the larger RPis.

      • I'll +1 on this comment
        "They also bring community and dev tools. Most other ARM platforms are a mixture of crappy code libraries and proprietary, non-free IDEs with little support if you don't use them."

        In the past when trying to do some hobby projects around microcontrollers, I found it super frustrating to use the tools available from Texas Instruments, etc. I would have gladly paid more for a chip/platform with a more coherent, less buggy. And mind you the boards I got were the 'educational/demo boards

      • Honestly, the ST tools have been surprising me at every step of the way. After you do some basic config, they will spit out a Makefile that builds everything using arm-gcc. Their HAL / libraries have also been surprisingly easy to use, and they do a decent job of staying out of your way. For most stuff I'll just write to registers directly, but for things like USB middleware (mass storage class, etc) it's nice to be able to just throw that at the vendor library and not deal with the underlying complexity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I found the ST libraries to be buggy and incomplete. Ended up using them very little.

          STM32 Cube MX is good but proprietary. Trying to get you to use an app to select parts is really annoying.

      • You seem to be comparing it to Arduino which is not really similar. But a few counter points:
        - Programmable I/O is common on many ARM based MCUs and was even common on some 8bit MCUs.
        - $4 is not cheap for an MCU. It's cheap for a development board, but if your end goal is not to have something huge in your design then it's on the expensive side of many 32bit ARM MCUs.
        - They bring precisely zero community. This is not a raspberry pi and not compatible with any raspberry pi products on the market and won't sh

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Have you looked at the programmable IO? It's a lot more powerful than stuff like the configurable logic in Atmel/Microchip parts, for example.

          • The PIO does look interesting. Personally, I would have preferred some programmable glue logic in place of the dedicated logic / state machine they are using. The example "programs" for configuring the PIO look nasty. Granted - I have not spent much time to figure it out. But I would much rather use HDL with well defined IO signals to/from the programmable logic block. Perhaps keep the shift register and FIFOs, they would be useful in most applications and would save on programmable logic resources. B
      • All strong points. I wish it had a built in battery connector and charger, though. Maybe in V2.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leptons ( 891340 )
      The RPi nano will have Arduino support in no time. Yes, it will be just another "-duino" in short order.

    • ST Blue Pills have a Cortex M4 on board and they are so cheap, even in the EU, that you cannot buy them in less than packs of 5. However, you need an external FTDI programmer to program them, which is a hassle.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Whereas you can literally drag and drop a file onto a USB drive that shows up when you plug this Pi MCU into a PC in order to program it. No special programming software needed.

  • ESP-32 is cheaper and superior in any way. Includes WiFI.
    No need for this device. Only the advantage is the name

    • ESP-32 is about twice the $4 price.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by leptons ( 891340 )
        I'm getting ESP32s with 16MB flash for $2.99 from Mouser, in Qty 1.

        • Re:Not good (Score:5, Informative)

          by Vairon ( 17314 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @03:50PM (#60975114)

          Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that $2.99 price just for the ESP32 MCU not an MCU and a board to run it on like the Raspberry Pi Pico?

          Once the RP2040 is for sale individually like the ESP32 is its price could be cheaper than $2.99.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      Is it though? For every use case? Why?

    • Here's where it's not superior: I have no idea how to use one of these things at all. I've never worked with one, I don't know what I need or how to program it. I AM interested—I've been thinking of how to make a small device that I can put in my building's laundry room to measure if the machines are running so I know when I can go down and put my stuff in, or when the cycle has finished—but this is well out of my area of knowledge. I can follow any of the numerous links to AliExpress and pay so

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        The problem is the RPi Si does not include any wireless capability. No bluetooth, no wifi. For that you'd need to add an ESP8266 or ESP32, or similar. The ESP32 has wifi and bluetooth out of the box.

        • Sure, great. I still have no idea how to use it or build anything with it. I get that the the ESP boards appear to be more capable, but I'm not anyone that can take advantage of that yet.

          Raspberry Pi isn't trying to make the most capable devices, they're trying to make it possible for everyone to buy and use them, and I greatly suspect that their entry into this space will lift all boats, because as some point, I might need something with WiFi or Bluetooth, and I'll have learned enough to be able to use the

  • Silly (Score:3)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:05PM (#60973686) Homepage
    I can already buy Arduino Nano v3 boards at a lower price point [aliexpress.com]. Plus they leverage the huge Arduino ecosystem. Plus, if I want, I can then upgrade to something like an ESP32 with built in WiFi that runs the same code for hardly any more money.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      Atmel 328 has 2kb of memory, 32kb of flash, 20mhz, and a fraction of the IO capability, not even in the same world as what this system offers. As far as the Arduino, you have a point, sure, but how long do you figure before the Arduino toolchain handles this new entry? Did you read the specs or features that the Pi entry brings to the table? It's actually pretty cool, and I for one am pretty excited about it. If nothing else, having another competitor in the maker-space will keep Expressif snd ST on the

      • It's actually pretty cool

        I mean it is when you compare to an overpriced Arduino with it's own development framework. Less so when you compare it to other actual 32bit microcontrollers on the market.

        It's not bad by any measure. But it sure as hell isn't unique, and in many cases depending on your needs could easily be outclassed by another product.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          Nobody said it's unique, and of course it could be easily outclassed depending on your needs. I assume, with your comparing it to "other actual 32bit mcs", you're referring to production level solutions? Again, your point is 100% accurate, but that's not the point of a device such as this. Me, personally, I don't have the knowledge, experience, tools, or desire to spin up my own solution from a bare chip. So I'm "stuck" with "Arduino type" solutions, and now there's another intriguing entry. I just d

          • It's a flat microcontroller on a dev board. People aren't shitting on this, they are just fast to not hype it. There are plenty of alternatives to Arduino, including alternatives to arduino based on ARM that even support Arduino. Arduino isn't limited to 8bit AVRs. It runs on ESPs, on Cortex M0+ (I have zero doubt Arduino will be ported to this chip as well), STM32s, all manner of microcontrollers. They are all available in various devboards online from ebay for the price of a cup of coffee.

            The world is you

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Pascoea ( 968200 )

              It's a flat microcontroller on a dev board

              Sure, technically you're correct, but it does have unique features. The PIO is what intrigues me the most. I work with WS2812 a lot, being able to offload the protocol work to microcode on the GPIO and let the CPU do other things is very intriguing, and unique to this new uC as far as I can tell.

              The "shitters" did read it and weren't impressed

              Most of the negative comments on here are something to the effect of OP: You can already get cheap AVR boards or use an ESP32, acting like those two "families" are the end-all-be-all for tinkerers. Yes, I have ac

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Vairon ( 17314 )

              In what way does it have poor documentation?

              It's got an over 638 page datasheet for the RP2040 MCU linked on their website: https://datasheets.raspberrypi... [raspberrypi.org]
              It's got a 28 page brief describing the dev board: https://datasheets.raspberrypi... [raspberrypi.org]
              They include schematics and spreadsheets describing all 28 parts included on the dev board: https://datasheets.raspberrypi... [raspberrypi.org]
              They include frittzing files for creating your own PCB as well: https://datasheets.raspberrypi... [raspberrypi.org]
              They also wrote a book for beginners called Get S

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Pascoea ( 968200 )
                The only thing I could think would be that this new device isn't going to have nearly the amount of community content/support that the Arduino community has.
      • ESP32 != Atmel 328

        They both can be programmed with the Arduino IDE but the ESP32 is vastly more powerful for a negligible amount more money.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          ESP32 != Atmel 328

          The Nano 3 that was mentioned is most definitely a 328, but yes the ESP definitely is not.

          They both can be programmed with the Arduino IDE but the ESP32 is vastly more powerful for a negligible amount more money.

          Yes, well aware. I'm not trying to bash the ESP, I've used quite a few of them in my projects, they are good products. Hard to believe that they can pack so much into these things at the price point they do. I'd swear by the reactions I've gotten on here, suggesting that I like this new Pi, that I'd called someone's baby ugly. Sheesh.

          • It's all good :-) I apologize I misread the post and commented before I saw the whole thread. I like choice. It will be interesting to see how the new product support develops. The programmable state machine for each pin make It useful for certain specialized projects.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Pascoea ( 968200 )
              No apology needed, but I appreciate it. The PIO state machine is what really piqued my interest. I'll be buying one to build my next lighting controller. Cheers bud.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leptons ( 891340 )
      What's silly is thinking the RPi Nano won't be supported by Arduino. It will take about 10 minutes before someone does a half-assed Arduino implementation for it.

  • Depends on the tradition. (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:17PM (#60973738) Journal

    Unlike computers, microcontrollers don't run traditional operating systems. Your code runs directly on the chip.

    Sure they do. They're just from an older tradition. B-)

    It has a dual-core Arm processor (running at 133MHz), 264KB of RAM, 26 GPIO pins including 3 analog inputs, a micro-USB port and a temperature sensor. It doesn't come with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

    Why not use an off-the-shelf IoT chip? Like from Nordic, to name ust one. You'd get all that (don't have the GPIO count handy but it's comparable) plus radio networking, several onboard peripherals and support for several peripheral bus standards - and several instances of them.

    And it costs $4

    Maybe they couldn't get it cheap enough?

    • Oh, yes. And the open-source Zephyr RTOS runs on the Nordic chips - complete with a Bluetooth radio stack written by Nordic.

    • Re:Depends on the tradition. (Score:5, Informative)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @12:31PM (#60973798) Journal

      Why not use an off-the-shelf IoT chip? Like from Nordic, to name ust one.

      Well, I was thinking, this thing has a dual core 133MHz ARM chip which is much more powerful, the good Nordics often have a single core cortex M4 at 64MHz (with FPU!)...

      but then I got thinking, wait what. What on earth do you need with all that power? Frankly the Nordic one I used was way overpowered compared to the 8051 it replaced which in turn had tons of headroom for the BLE controller job it was doing for me.

      OTHO having a separate core means some interesting things if you need some seriously precision timing. You can do all the timing related stuff on one core, and all the IO stuff (i.e. the USB port) on the other one with very very low jitter.

      It is a lot of power though.

      That said I think it's reasonable. It's not just a chip, it's a ready to go board. And RPi has, frankly, a good name. It means you'll be able buy these reliably from a wide variety of vendors both local and remote, the parts will stay available for years and there will be no questions over provenance and counterfeiting. Sure there are other things which are cheaper/faster/more capable, but if they do what you need and you're not super price sensitive, then a large, well respected brand with a good reputation takes all the excitement out of sourcing.

  • Just for comparison to the 28 page datasheet published for this ARM controller the Atmel SAM D21 (ARM Cortex M0+) datasheet is 1111 pages. Why do I get the feeling I'd be hunting across half the internet looking for documentation on this Pi product.

  • And why don't they have more than 3 analog I/0 pins. That is really quickly not enough anymore.

  • "But microcontrollers are specifically designed to interact with other things."

    The pi was " specifically designed to interact with other things. "
    That's what it's GPIO pins are for.

    The pico's advantage over the pi is price.

    Great work techcrunch.

  • This is something new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ubergeek65536 ( 862868 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @03:44PM (#60975070)

    The RP2040 does things that an STM32 or ESP can't. The big feature for me is the programmable state machine on each IO pin. It allows deterministic timing for custom protocols. You can implement WS2812, DVI or whatever new serial protocol comes along without loading down the main processor. It could also be used for motor control or a SMPS driver that requires tight timings and fast updates. There are other microcontrollers that do this like the PSoC or Propeller 2 but they are more than double the price.

    • Great points! Somebody mod this up :-)

    • So... we're going to see the RP2040 being used as stepper motor controllers?

      Dual-core ARM CPUs with 2MB built-in flash memory that only cost 4$USD being used to control motors. What a time to be alive!

  • They didn't cheap out (Score:3)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Thursday January 21, 2021 @04:13PM (#60975252)

    With 2M of flash and countless peripherals its a really good processor.
    It has ~5 each of UART, I2C and SPI ports. This is probably one of the best well 'peripheraled' M0 processor on the market.
     

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