machine learning framework, while a port of
the Arduino core is promised.
The hardware on offer covers a lot of
features. The 26 general-purpose input/
output (GPIO) pins include hardware
interrupts, three analogue inputs with a 12-bit
resolution and 16 pulse-width modulation
(PWM) channels.
There are also two SPI, two I2C and two
UART buses, plus an on-chip clock and timer
with calendar, as well as a temperature sensor
as an added bonus.
If that list isn’t enough, the RP2040 at
the heart of the Pico also includes eight
programmable input/output (PIO) state
machines. Using these, you can define
your own hardware – either to add extra
buses above and beyond those provided as
standard, or to interface with hardware that
isn’t normally compatible. It’s rare to see a
microcontroller priced as aggressively as the
Pico, but it comes with a reasonably steep
learning curve.
The Pico doesn’t tick every box though. A
notable absence is any form of radio, whether
Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. That’s not surprising at the
Pico’s price point, but it may make the similarly
priced ESP8266 a more tempting option.
The board’s micro-USB port, used for
data and power, is another odd choice – the
Raspberry Pi 4 saw a move to the more
modern USB Type-C, making the Pico’s
micro-USB port feel like a regression.
These are nitpicks though. At £3.60 inc VAT
from pimoroni.com and other resellers, with
unpopulated headers, the Raspberry Pi Pico
offers impressive capabilities for its price. It’s
also going to be interesting to see what the
community does with the PIO machines.for this very deliberate design choice is the
Pico board can be used as a module, soldered
flat against a carrier board to power a finished
design. For those using it as a module, there’s
a wealth of support – a detailed databook
spans hundreds of pages, and comes
alongside a C/C++ software development kit
(SDK) with its own documentation.
However, Raspberry Pi hasn’t forgotten the
beginners. The Pico launches with an official
MicroPython port, offering access to the
majority of its features – USB 1.1 host/device
modes and full internal clock functionality
notwithstanding – in the beginner-friendly yet
deceptively powerful Python language.
Hook up the Pico to a Raspberry Pi, or
any other computer, drag and drop the
MicroPython firmware, and you’re away. The
USB port includes a serial console with the
MicroPython REPL already running, and the
Thonny IDE boasts day-one support. There’s
also a version of Adafruit’s CircuitPython,
a MicroPython fork focused on education,
and Google has ported its TensorFlow LiteBeagleBoard.org and
Seeed Partner for
RISC-V BeagleVOpen hardware specialists
BeagleBoard.org and Seeed Studio
have partnered to design and launch an
open-hardware Linux-capable, single-
board computer based on the free and
open-source RISC-V instruction set
architecture, called the BeagleV.
Powered by a StarFive Jinghong
7100 chip, which houses two 64-bit
SiFive U74 RISC-V cores, a single Nvidia
Deep Learning Accelerator (NVLDA)
and a neural network engine (NNE)
accelerator, the board includes 8GB of
memory – but not, in its first incarnation,
a dedicated GPU.
The companies are taking
applications at beagle.seed.cc for a pilot
production run at $149 US (around £140
inc VAT) ahead of a mass-production run
with an Imagination Technologies GPU
later this year.N EWS I N BRI EF
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