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Hardware

Raspberry Pi Introduces a $6 Board With Wi-Fi (techcrunch.com) 64

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Everyone's favorite versatile microcontroller maker, Raspberry Pi, just unveiled a handful of new, budget-minded products. The company is building on the success of its $4 Pico board, which has thus far moved just under two million units since its January 2021 launch. From a report: The new Pico W is launching today for $6 -- the "W" (and additional $2) brings 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity to the system. The $5 Pico H adds a pre-populated header for interfacing with other systems; the Pico WH ($7) gets you both. The first two are available right now, while WH is shipping at some point in August. As the company notes, its boards have found a lot of success beyond their initial hobbyist and educational focus, as companies have begun to intregrate the controllers directly into their products.
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Raspberry Pi Introduces a $6 Board With Wi-Fi More

Raspberry Pi Introduces a $6 Board With Wi-Fi

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  • I just wish I could get video acceleration working on a Pi 4.

  • News Flash! More products you can't get! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PtigaD ( 8535521 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @03:13PM (#62663558)
    So sad to see announcements for yet more products that are going to be nearly impossible to find in stock until the 2030s.

    • So sad to see announcements for yet more products that are going to be nearly impossible to find in stock until the 2030s.

      They were only able to ship two million Pico boards, during a global pandemic.

      Confidence is...low?

      • They were only able to ship two million Pico boards, during a global pandemic.

        A small consolation for anyone trying to get their hands on a Pi 4. There's nothing to defend here. The Rpi foundation has always had logistic problems, the pandemic only made it worse.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • The problem is that they can't get enough of the processors. The manufacturing facility is not the limiting factor. The company that sells the SoCs for the Pi line (other than the Pico), Broadcom, isn't supplying them with an adequate supply. Broadcom, in turn, probably can't get enough of them from their fabrication partners (Broadcom operates one fab, but many of their chips are made by outside fabs), and what capacity they can get is mostly going to higher-profit products rather than SoCs for Raspberry P

    • Re:News Flash! More products you can't get! (Score:5, Informative)

      by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @03:25PM (#62663598)

      https://www.adafruit.com/produ... [adafruit.com]

      https://thepihut.com/collectio... [thepihut.com]

      Picos have been in stock. They are entirely a Pi design so they have far more control over their components.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chihowa ( 366380 )

        Both of those links are entirely out of stock...

        • Right now they are out of stock, but Adafruit gets more Picos regularly. So does my local Micro Center store, which currently has plenty. (You have to ask for them at the pickup counter; they're not putting them on the shelves.) The Pico W will probably be scarce for a month or two as production ramps up. The only other Raspberry Pi product that is reasonably obtainable is the Model 400; those come and go at various stores and are usually at or near list price when they are available.

    • I hope it's better than their Zero W boards, which even when they were in stock were limited to one purchase per customer at most sellers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I got 5 of the non-wifi models without any problem at all and pretty much at advertised prices. A quick search on Aliexpress has several sellers with ~ 10k available (original and clone) and item plus shipping to Europe at around $4. For this one I did not find a source, it is probably too new.

      This is not a specialty low-volume chip were doing a run requires pooling due to low numbers and still not enough volume for a real run. It is also not a very high volume chip. Ideal for sharing with a number of other

  • Why have so many versions? One or two bucks does not make a difference. Just make everything with wifi on it. How can you make a smart product without wifi nowadays?

    • Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrSpock11 ( 993950 ) on Thursday June 30, 2022 @03:17PM (#62663572)

      If you're making a product that ships millions of units $1 or $2 does make a difference. Extra unnecessary components also possibly mean more power draw. Finally, adding wifi to things that don't require it is a security concern.

      • Finally, adding wifi to things that don't require it is a security concern.

        Yes, I'm sure security concerns will be raised, said no one representing the Internet of Thingy Greed...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Finally, adding wifi to things that don't require it is a security concern.

        Indeed. That is why I have 5 of the non-WIFI ones and will likely get zero of these.

    • Why have so many versions?

      Different use cases.

      Just make everything with wifi on it.

      Did you write: "Just make everything have a high battery drain"? Different use cases. If you don't like the features, don't buy it. For someone else the lack of pointless electronics is important.

      How can you make a smart product without wifi nowadays?

      The majority of smart products do not have wifi, they are some other wireless or bus based systems. If you're lucky they have a network gateway with wifi.

    • Two main reasons in this case:

      The 'Pi Pico' is sort of an intermediate between being a dev board and being intended for use as the mainboard of something or integrated onto the mainboard of something(sticker price for the RP2040 alone is $1, the base-model pico is $3 for the(required for the 2040) external SPI flash along with all the passives and bits and pieces required to make a complete system on a board designed to be usable either standalone or mounted(edge castellations and through-holes on the 40

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It does make a difference. Not everybody earns a buck a minute. Also, power consumption with WiFi is higher and system complexity as well. There may even be people (like me) that do not want WiFi.

  • I mean, for less than 200 bucks.

    • Mine was in the mail before this posting came online and I paid about 7 Dollars, in Europe. Should arrive tomorrow.

      And when I finished playing with it you can have it for 100 Bucks. Deal?

    • My issue with Arduino is that dumb c++ style coding scheme. If every line requires a semicolon at the end then it's the same as no line having a semicolon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Arduino isn't a microcontroller. It runs on the pico though.

    • Arduino is not a microcontroller, it's a system. And these days it covers a lot more than AVR-based hardware made by the Arduino guys. In fact I'd go so far as to say that none of the most interesting Arduino-compatible devices are AVR, except maybe the attiny variants. Those are still super interesting for the most limited applications.

      • If anyone rips out an AVR based Arduino I reach for my revolver. Any other board, that works fine with Arduino is 10-50 times faster and costs less. And smaller.

        Hell, a Teensy 4 is about at price parity, runs at 600 MHz, uses less power and has a FPU.

  • Um, Raspberry PI, your brand is dying.

  • If anyone wants to try the RISC-V bandwagon I just purchased a Sipeed Lichee RV from AliExpress. Before anyone bitches about sata ports or bandwidth no this board isn't designed for that. It has modest specs and perfectly fits my intended application. You'll need to buy the dock pcb as an extra and they do publish schematics. I think Alliwinner even publishes the Verilog code for the chip.

    • or the Espressif ESP32-C3, which is in the same category and price point as the RPi Pico from the article.
  • The three new boards could have all been the same PCB but with different parts depopulated. It would have encouraged people to try soldering. Depopulated pads cost nothing if the space is already there.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dhaen ( 892570 )
      No. They had to change to a 4-layer board that's more expensive. Using that for lesser models would have increased costs.

    • Encouraging people to do SMD soldering an wreck the boards is seldom an engineering goal.

      SMD soldering is a rather rare skill requiring a bit of kit.

  • ESP32 (Score:3)

    by lordlod ( 458156 ) on Friday July 01, 2022 @02:43AM (#62664944)

    Interesting to see how well this performs against the ESP32.

    Raspberry has a solid brand name, but the ESP32 seems to perform significantly better, particularly floating point operations, and has been in the market for years now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm more interesting in how power efficient they are. The ESP32 isn't great for battery/solar powered devices. For really low power stuff you need a separate MCU that uses the ESP like a peripheral, only powering it up when it needs to talk to the wifi.

      • The pico doesn't seem particularly power efficient. From what I can see, they draw about 90mA @ 5V running flat out. The ESP32-C3 draws about 85mA @ 3.3V with WiFi active (Rx only), and goes down to ~20-25mA when the radio is off. You can put the radio to sleep while you aren't using it (but there is a significant draw to then reconnect). The upcoming ESP-C6 will have 802.11ax, which has much better techniques available for IoT devices to schedule their beacon signalling (TWT).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LubosD ( 909058 )

      ESP32 is also a lot smaller. Pico W is basically double the size, which kills it for me.

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