The Raspberry Pi Pico WAS Overrated! But that changed!

You can get the Raspberry Pi Pico (W) here: (affiliate links)

In this video we will be having a closer look at the first microcontroller board from Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi Pico. The board is 1.5 years old but back then I was convinced that it was overrated. But things changed and nowadays I think it is a good Arduino alternative. So let me show you how to use the board and what exactly happened that made me change my mind. Let's get started!

Websites which were shown/used in the video:

Thanks to Altium for sponsoring this video.

0:00 Why I think the Pico was Overrated!
1:24 Intro
2:00 General Overview of the Pico
3:43 Good Parts of the Pico
6:55 One Bad Thing about the Pico
8:01 Truly Great Stuff about the Pico
9:35 Verdict

[ste]

"Back then" you completely missed the point of the Pico. It's a decently powerful board, not particularly special, BUT the price is the point. £3.00 for a powerful, easy to use microcontroller is big. Also, you were never limited to Micropython - there was a C/C++ sdk from day one. It completely blows the commonly used Arduino (Nano and Uno) out of the water. Andit only got better with Arduino IDE compatibility when that became available (something not available at first, but we knew it was coming from day one)

[TimSavage-drummer]

With the help of a second pico (with picoprobe installed) you can also add breakpoints and step through your running code. A big help for debugging more complex code.

[adamsfusion]

I wouldn't sleep on the RP2040 C/C++ library and included CMake plugins. It's seriously well made and the documentation is a good read. Beyond that, I've yet to see anything in the affordable range that comes close to matching the power of the PIOs. I've been able to take complex timing interfaces I've done in the past on Blue Pills and convert them into PIO only programs. Those 9 instructions are insanely expressive and make it possible to implement something like QSPI in just a handful of operations.

The RP2040 is my favorite microcontroller to come out of this decade and it's going to be a tough match to beat.

[fmdj]

For development it's also worth considering platform IO with vs code to program it in C++ directly and get something less hackish than the Arduino compatibility layer.

[vaughnvarma]

One important thing to know when using the Arduino IDE with the Pico, is that, to my knowledge, it *doesn't* leverage the RP2040's fast floating point library (at least it didn't when I started playing around with it earlier this year). This is fine for many applications, and it's still way faster than a typical arduino, but switching to the C SDK does make those operations much, much faster. I tested this by running the same code, with a ton of floating point operations, compiled and uploaded via Arduino IDE, and via cmake/manual copy/paste, and IIRC it increased the cycles per second (running my entire program, not CPU cycles or FLOPS or anything) from something like 20-80k to 300k.
Not a very comprehensive test, but it noticeably smoothed out the stepper motor movement I also had running in that loop, and made the Pico exceptional for my application, rather than acceptable.

[fordrollhaus]

I mean I think one of the main advantages is the price. Getting a powerful, multi core microcontroller for $4, or $6 with wifi, is insane.

[Oinikis]

The first advantage I see with this over arduino is for various DIY flight controllers due to greater speed. I made a gyro stabilized active control for a rocket, and it had operating frequency of over 200Hz, with greater speed and memory, better flight control and less gyro drift should be achieved.

[Samuel-euts]

Honestly compared to other vendors, the rp2040/pico C++ sdk is awesome, the documentation amazing and really easy to understand, I would say it's no less complicated than seting up platformio
And the fact that the rp2040 is in stock is a major advantage

[MariusHeier]

The most impressive things with the Pico was that it existed. For the past years the other products have not existed. And that Pi foundation still did not charge a premium for it because the other companies messed up their manufacturing.

[amansaxena]

The only disadvantage for me, with RP2040/Pico is the lack of an Ultra Low Power Domain, which results in a very lacking sleep functionality, and thus is unusable for battery powered projects, like sensor nodes

[NOMOREPAM]

The PicoVGA is a great proyect. I'm doing a long learning session of it.

[anshulsingh]

I have coding knowledge. But I don't have much electronics knowledge. Never used Arduino or Raspberry pi.

But I want to get into it for some fun projects I have in mind.

Any suggestions and tips how I should get started?

[davidpetry]

You can also program it in C / C++.
The documentation is really good

[Thats_Mr_Random_Person_to_you]

I do genuinely believe the PIO's are THE single biggest benefit to a pico that really does put it into a different class and can really really add additional features that blow the arduino/esp boards out the water. Your VGA example I think proves that.... but kinda as you point out, PIO is a very advanced feature that the average hobbyist is unlikely to fully benefit from.

But given how commercial customers can now buy RP2040 chips standalone to integrate into things I think it bodes well for the 2040 ecosystem as a whole.

[petrkucera]

If you want to measure ripple or transient, noise and amplitude when signal shape accuracy is important, you have to use spring on ground ring to make ground loop so small as possible. In 7:14 is typical example, how to not measure noise and ripple on SMPS supplies. When i did this last time, i catch 10× more higher values than reality was. Yeah, im sure that some noise will pass thru that tiny SMPS supply on board, but, are you sure, that this noise doesnt come from USB?

[edgeeffect]

The Arduino IDE was the first things that started my move away from the Arduino "ecosystem".

[bheeshmavasuprasad]

Thank you, I've wanted to buy one but wasn't sure if it was powerful enough and yes, micropython. I'm definitely reconsidering

[Davedarko]

So the fuzz about the ADC is _not_ coming from the power conversion. I read that thread where somebody did a histogram of measured values and had some spikes for certain ADC values (see Errata 11 in the datasheet for the values). Those were the result of the wrong size of the internal capacitors used in their comparators.

[lemon]

I take psychic damage every time he refers to normal microcontrollers as "arduino alternatives"

[veisystems]

LOL @ 9:38 "... I think that the Pico truly became a good alternative over time...". Up to that point in the video, the Pico didn't change, but rather your knowledge and opinion if it changed. ;)