What's the use of a Raspberry Pi Pico? #raspberrypi

In this video I demonstrate an unusual use of a Pi Pico - emulating a USB Ethernet adapter to server a website.

This is possible because the arduino is kind of like a souped up Arduino, which comes awake quickly and begins emulating the hardware almost instantly. It's a cool trick, but I'm not sure it's useful.

[abetoday]

Anyone do any cool pico projects? Would love more ideas?

[TheLexikitty]

USB emulated Ethernet web servers are used on higher end printers like badge/ID printers to serve the web configuration interface when the device cannot be connected to Ethernet, still allowing for web interface and driverless control of things like thermal temps for ink rollers and what formats of card rhe printer accepts. Easier than maintains a set of drivers or a software application to configure and adjust settings.

[ArtemisKitty]

Practical uses: MITM attacks, spoofing authentication (such as for CFW on consoles somthey download that thinking it's the original firmware), using it on a pico W as a wireless bridge that'll trick devices like business VOIP phones that won't connect if they detect any wireless or multiple NAT devices in the chain... (I'm looking at you, Avaya...)
Just the first few uses I came up with offhand. I'm sure there are many more. And more fun ones.

[kbhasi]

I was reminded of how much I prefer the RP2040 and nRF52840 (they both can run CircuitPython) to Arduino and that I wished for a LattePanda with an RP2040 instead of an AVR microcontroller.

Edit: I think the USB network adaptor could be used for serving up an admin interface over HTTP, because some projects may not have a screen and keypad or there may be too many settings to make available through those.

[gonun]

This sounds like a neat way to get a GUI for devices you only need the GUI once to set it up. Don't need to worry about screens and buttons, just plug in the USB and go to the website

[Joshinken]

There is an open source fight stick game controller that uses this for config. You just go to a certain address and it’ll show you all your settings and let you change them

[dominicodematte]

I can, at my school there are many sites that are blocked (open ai’s chatgpt) What you could do is set up a pi to run lama or another locally ran chat bot and then have it act like a website. Then you can access chat bots from locked down devices like chrome books. And this is better than just having a separate device like a phone to use as now you can copy and paste in and out of the program

[GKZanite]

The gamepad example you mentiioned, namely ones using the GP2040-CE firmware use that as a web configuration tool for remapping buttons and adding plugins via web browser. It's a really powerful web config too.

[workethicrecords]

An extemley capable MCU for the price. The atmel chips on the standard arduino are about 16x slower, for 5x the price. Any embeded project you'd like to implement USB, higher sampling rates of analog lines, or any kind of heavier data processing, it's not a bad choice for price per performance.

[trunkit]

I feel like this could work for things like single player video games that require an internet connection to run. Just have the Pico fake the address it’s trying to connect to, so you don’t need to modify your game or console.

[minegaminglp]

You could maybe turn that page into an entire config/debug menu for another device, maybe just for debugging easily or for tweaking maybe, i mean that could probably be useful when you have some entire project just built completely and you're just too lazy to take it apart again just to tweak it a bit.
Also just watched the video about the game console you made that was awesome!

[eliyahhawila]

You can turn it into your customized version of the Hak5 LAN Turtle

[drcybr]

You could use that to build something like an web-interface for a device you built. Or modify a console with it and show thermals or control mods in that console.

[KiraSlith]

I can think of a few uses, most of them are either for bringing wifi to retro consoles/computers (BlueSCSI does this already), or exploiting MitM attacks on newer consoles.

[johnm]

its great for some LAN type connections where you cant or dont want to connect the systems to the internet for whatever reason

so you can just connect everything through a switch and use this as a sort of "gateway" which can emulate the system that assigns IP addresses to each device

its a special use-case, and is somewhat complex depending on how you set it up

[ruaine]

This would be great for testing a API or something similar, or a program that listens for network traffic of some sort.

[galaxis]

a way that has been used is with gp2040ce controller firmware, you customize the entire firmware through a browser

[johnsmith]

A practical use would be a USB Ethernet adapter that's actually a network tap. You'd be able to redirect traffic too.

[kyouhyung]

You can build a web-ui frontend for whatever applucation you build with your pico. You could host a configuration ui or a manual you can i teract using your web browser.

[milescarter]

Why can't you think of a practical use? If you need a USB WiFi adapter there are plenty of reasons to use a Pico as one. (If you have a lot of Picos, then you don't have to inventory a separate WiFi stick). Also hoping that Pico can turn into an 8BitDo style BT adapter at some point, those things are expensive.

Also maybe you can run an adblocker or something on it? Or encrypt the files on the card but use the web browser to decrypt them, saving processing power but still keeping them safe.

What about using it as a bridge to some other form of network? Like a LASER link. (Did you read the story of how in the early silicon valley days a tech company bought some laser/telescope from Edmund Scientifics and set up a rooftop link from one building to another over a long distance?)