Farnell unveils Raspberry Pi Pico

1 min read

Farnell has announced the availability of the first product to be built on Raspberry Pi-designed silicon, the Raspberry Pi Pico.

The Raspberry Pi Pico is built around the new Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, delivering a flexible, highly affordable development platform that can also be directly deployed into end products, reducing time-to-market.

The device offers high performance for integer workloads, a large on-chip memory, and a wide range of I/O options, making it a flexible solution for a wide range of microcontroller applications.

Professional design engineers who are already comfortable working with Raspberry Pi will easily adopt the Raspberry Pi Pico and appreciate its ease of use and affordability.

Key features include:

  • Memory: 264kB of on-chip SRAM; 2MB of on-board QSPI Flash.
  • Interfacing and mechanicals: 26 GPIO pins, of which 3 can be used as analogue inputs. 0.1” through-hole pads with castellated edges for SMT assembly.
  • Power: On-board power supply to generate 3.3V for RP2040 and external circuitry. Wide input voltage range, from 1.8V to 5.5V, giving designers the flexibility to select their preferred power source.
  • Developer tools: Simple drag and drop programming via micro-USB. 3-pin Serial Wire Debug (SWD) for interactive debugging. Comprehensive C SDK, mature MicroPython port, and extensive examples and documentation.

At the heart of the Raspberry Pi Pico is the RP2040, a Raspberry Pi-designed microcontroller. It features two ARM Cortex-M0+ cores clocked at 133 MHz; 264 kB of on-chip SRAM; 30 multifunction GPIO pins; dedicated hardware for commonly used peripherals alongside a programmable I/O subsystem for extended peripheral support; a four-channel ADC with internal temperature sensor; and built-in USB 1.1 with host and device support.

Farnell customers will be able to purchase the Raspberry Pi Pico from the Farnell website from Monday 25 January.