Raspberry Pi Pico

The Raspberry Pi Pico represents an affordable yet powerful microcontroller board featuring versatile digital interfaces. It showcases the RP2040, Raspberry Pi’s inaugural in-house designed microcontroller chip. The Pico board incorporates essential external circuitry to support the RP2040 chip, including Flash, crystal, power supplies, decoupling, and a USB connector. Most of the RP2040 microcontroller pins are conveniently accessible through user IO pins situated along the left and right edges of the board. Four RP2040 IO pins serve internal functions such as driving an LED, controlling the on-board Switched Mode Power Supply (SMPS), and sensing system voltages.

Utilizing an on-board buck-boost SMPS, the Pico efficiently generates the necessary 3.3 volts for powering the RP2040 and external circuitry from a wide range of input voltages (approximately 1.8 to 5.5V). This feature allows flexible power sourcing, accommodating various inputs like a single Lithium-Ion cell or 3 AA cells in series. Integration with battery chargers is seamless, enhancing the versatility of the Pico’s power chain. Reprogramming the Pico’s flash memory is straightforward via USB, where users can simply drag and drop files onto the Pico, recognized as a mass storage device. Alternatively, the Serial Wire Debug (SWD) port enables interactive debugging of code running on the RP2040.

The Pico is designed for versatility, offering options for either soldered 0.1″ pin-headers or surface-mountable usage. Its user IO pins are also castellated, facilitating surface mounting as a “module.” SMT pads beneath the USB connector and BOOTSEL button enable access to these signals when used as a reflow-soldered SMT module.