Re: New Pico2

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:
 

<https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/tiny-2350?variant=42092638699603>
<https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pga2350?variant=42092629229651>

 
They arrived today (quite good for ordering on Sunday)
 
The tiny one lives up to its name, about the size of a mini SIM
card, even the PGA one is only an inch square, has nothing but 1/10" pin
layout, should be good for embedding ... I'll get a picoplus2 when the
second batch become available

It's nice how they've integrated more stuff into the SiP, so you can make
things smaller.  The trouble with the original Pico was that it took up more
board space than say an ESP32.

Now, if somebody would do a module pin-compatible with the ESP32 modules
that includes wifi, then things will be Very Interesting.  Looks possible -
there's a board with the RP2350 and an ESP32-WROOM side by side which shows
the comparison:
https://www.switch-science.com/collections/%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%9C%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89/products/9796
and there might be space to get the wifi chip inside the footprint.
Couldn't say whether the RF performance would let you though.

What's nice also is that it's a Proper Arm Chip, rather than the weird
Tensilica Xtensa CPU architecture in the base ESP32s.  Some programming
languages like Rust are better supported on Arm than on oddball CPUs.  ESP32
have gone to RISC-V for some of the newer ones (but not all, so you can't
get all the features with a RISC-V CPU) which is better, but with the RP2350
you get all the boxes ticked in one package.  Aside from wifi, of course.

(apparently the wireless version of the Pico 2 is due end of the year -
meanwhile people are putting RP2350s with ESP32 modules on boards like the
above.  Maybe RPi have do some certification work before releasing).

Theo