Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller overview

The Raspberry Pi Pico is a development board based on the RP2040 microcontroller. Its dual-core Arm Cortex M0+ microprocessor makes it an inexpensive and powerful board. It can be programmed in C++ and Python. The W version can also connect to WiFi.

Some card features

• Energy-saving “sleep” mode
• 2 × SPI, 2 × I2C, 2 × UART, 3 × analog inputs
• 16 × controllable PWM channels (all GPIOs can send a pwm)
• Integrated clock and timer
• Internal temperature sensor
• 8 × input state machines

Microcontroller features

The Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller uses the Dual ARM Cortex-M0+ microprocessor. This processor operates at a clock frequency of 133 MHz. It has 264 kB RAM memory and 2000 kB Flash memory (for programming and data logging).

CPU Dual ARM Cortex-M0+ Voltage : 5V Flash : 2000 kB RAM : 264 kB Clock speed : 133MHz WiFi : Yes(W) Bluetooth : No SD : No

Power supply

The Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller operates over a voltage range of 1.8-5.5V, thanks to its on-board voltage regulator, while the microprocessor operates at 3.3V. In normal operation, the microcontroller consumes up to 90mA (if no power is supplied) and can accept a maximum current of 16mA on each of its IO pins.

Pinout

• Analog I/O : 3 (26, 27, 28)
• Digital I/O : 26 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
• PWM pins: 16 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
• Communication Serial: 2 ((0, 1), (4, 5))
• I2C communication: 2 ((4, 5), (2, 3))
• SPI communication: 2 ((5, 2, 4, 3), (9, 10, 12, 11))

Basic C-code and pin identification

#include <Arduino.h>

const int analogPin=A0; // broches A0,A1,A2 ou 26,27,28 
//(29=A3 Temperature sensor) 
const int digitalInPin=2; // broches 0-22,26-28
const int digitalOutPin=4; 
const int pwmPin=3; //2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17

int analogVal=0;
int digitalState=LOW;
int pwmVal=250;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  
  pinMode(analogPin,INPUT_PULLUP); // Argument OUTPUT, INPUT, INPUT_PULLUP
  pinMode(digitalInPin,INPUT);
  pinMode(digitalOutPin,OUTPUT);
  pinMode(pwmPin,OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
 analogVal=analogRead(analogPin); // return int
 Serial.print("Analog read : ");Serial.println(analogVal);
 digitalState=digitalRead(digitalInPin); // return boolean
 Serial.print("Digital read : ");Serial.println(digitalState);
 
 digitalWrite(digitalOutPin,HIGH); // valeur LOW(0) ou HIGH(1)
 analogWrite(pwmPin,pwmVal);// valeur 0-255 en fonction de analogWriteResolution();
}

Summary of features

Where to start

Sources

• RPi Pico Documentation
• List of SDK C libraries