the raspberry pi foundation spent a lot
of money to create a new chip
for makers and gives it away for cheap
if i believe all the fanboys videos it
is the most
important invention after sliced bread
but how does it compare with the
espressif and the stm32 chips
let's have a closer look great youtubers
here is the guy with the swiss accent
with a new episode and fresh ideas
around
sensors and microcontrollers remember
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all the past raspberry pi boards were
single board computers running linux
the smaller microcontroller boards for
makers run without an operating system
and are dominated by the arduino
framework
both segments are very different and
have their advantages
and disadvantages because the new pi
pico with an rp2040 chip competes in the
arduino segment
we will compare the following things
ecosystem support
how can we program the chip
documentation
cpu and memory interface possibilities
debugging power consumption
and we will look at the hyped pio
function
i will compare it with its main
competitors the esp32
the esp32 s2 and
the stm32 blackpill
let's start with the echo system the
raspberry pi foundation is an entirely
different company
than st microsystems or espressif
much more maker focused and according to
adafruit
much easier to do business with this is
excellent news for us and we already see
the fruit
of that fact micropython
and circuit python are already ported to
the new chip
and arduino announced that it would
support it
too this is an incredible speed
if we compare it with how long it took
to support the esp32
or the stm chips the esp32
s2 still is not supported in the
official arduino ide
package arduino and adafruit already
presented
their boards using the chip and other
manufacturers announced expansion boards
also extremely fast so in a short
time we will be able to use the new chip
in our project
incredible what the pi foundation was
capable of achieving
because of its brand when the pi 4 was
launched i ranted about the lack of
software support
this time it is the contrary i have to
congratulate the pie foundation for this
lounge
i think it was also possible because the
chips documentation is excellent
as we know it from all the raspberries
so the first point definitely goes to
the new chip and board
it is made for makers and the ecosystem
loves it espressif and st microsystems
do not have the makers as their primary
customers
maybe the pi foundation got some help
from their british arm colleagues
arm currently does not have a prominent
position in the maker
or stem area and as you will see in my
next video
a battle started in the chip area with
the appearance of
risc-v but is the chip useful for us
how does it compare with our current
darlings
here is the comparison table let's start
with the course
the rp2040 uses the weakest arm core
the m0 plus without a floating point
unit
in my comparison video number 353
the board with the m0 core was by far
the slowest
but the pi foundation pimped their chip
and clocked it with 125 megahertz
nearly 4 times the 32 megahertz of my
nucleo board
so we could assume that it has a maximum
of 67
wax mips for integer calculations
which could be comparable with a black
pill but still
way slower than the esp-32
the rp-2040 has two cores
like the normal esp32 as with the esp32
we will see where a second core will be
useful
for sure it needs some skills to program
it
even if we multiply the floating point
number by four
it is still way slower than the black
pill or the esp32
everybody talks about the pio of the
rp2040
what is that it is an extremely simple
co-processor
that runs at full speed but only
understands
nine commands the esp32s coprocessors
have a different goal they are here to
save energy
and therefore are slower but they have
many more commands the co-processor of
the esp32 s2
supports the full risc 5 rv 32imc
instruction set both have in common
that they have to be programmed in
assembler
so far i did not see many applications
of the esp32 coprocessors
and i expect the same with a pio
and here is what it can do with a pio
blinking neopixels this example uses a
short assembler program
like this one for the pio the c program
calls the assembler program
to output fast signals needed for the
neopixels
not easy to program hopefully we will
get libraries
which offer us this possibility so
the rp2040 cores are nothing special
they are on the slower side and we
probably will use
only one core for most of our projects i
would not use it for projects where
floating point
or speed plays an important role for all
other projects it is okay
but has no visible advantages the next
is flash memory
where we store our programs the pico has
two megabyte
four times more than the black pill but
half of the esp32
two megabyte is enough for most of our
projects
keep in mind that we do not have any
wi-fi or bluetooth available for
over-the-air updates or hosting websites
the sram of 264 kilobyte is big enough
for arduino-like c
programming where we compile the code if
we want to use micropython
it is different and the 8 megabyte psram
of the esp32
is a massive advantage for larger
programs
for our first steps or smaller projects
with micro or circuit python
the ram size is okay storage
for the rp2040 is positioned between the
black pill
and the esp32s the rp2040 offers
six pins more than the esp32 and the
blackpill
this should also result in more usable
gpio pins
but because the pico and the esp32 chips
have an external flash the blackpill has
more
usable pins for projects but all chips
have enough pins
for everyday usage its adc
should be comparable with the one of the
black pill
so it should be much better than the
ones of the esp32s
as we all know this is not very
difficult
but we have to test it later it supports
most of the standard interfaces except
for
i square s and canvas fortunately
these interfaces are not often used and
if you need one of those you still can
choose
a standard esp32 also
the number of interfaces is okay maybe
on the lower side if compared with the
competitors
dma seems to be a strong function of arm
chips
i never used it so i cannot compare it
with the esp32s
maybe the guys with knowledge can help
me out in the comments
the rp2040 the blackpill and the esp32
s2 all offer native usb support
this is a very cool and useful feature
this feature is best shown with
micropython
if you update raspberry os to the newest
version
tony the python tool has built-in pi
pico support if you connect a picot to a
raspberry pi's
usb connector and keep the boot button
pressed
the pco presents itself as an sd card if
you start tony
and go to tools options interpreter
you can select the pi pico as a device
and press
install or update firmware after few
seconds
the pico is ready to work with tony
this small python program blinks the led
and writes
hello world if i press run
the led starts to blink and the shell
shows the output
very simple if i change the delay time
and press
run again the blinking speed immediately
changes
this is the advantage of an interpreter
as shown in video number 240.
unfortunately we cannot yet stop the
program and debug it
as we can if we use python on the big
pi let's now continue with the specs
all competitors offer an swd interface
for debugging
with the other boards we use platform io
for that
unfortunately i do not see any plans to
support
the pico according to the documentation
you can use one core to debug the other
one and save a few dollars for a
debugging interface
looking at the current speed of adoption
i do not doubt
that we will see the first debugger soon
maybe
for tony and micropython so far
we saw that the features of the rp2040
chip
are okay for a typical maker project as
long as we do not need
wi-fi or ble this is the domain of the
esp32s
if you want this functionality within
rp2040
you have to wait for the next video
where i talk about the esp32
c3 and risc-5 power consumption
is a deciding factor for
battery-operated devices
here the m0 cores of the rp2040
can shine they consume only 18
milliampere with a blink sketch the dual
core esp32 consumes
53 milliampere with wi-fi switched off
the single core esp32 s2 still consumes
30 milliampere and the black pill 26.
so far i was not able to do any deep
sleep measurements
from the data sheet we see that the pico
consumes 1.3 to 1.9 milliampere
which is 1300 to 1900 micro ampere
nothing to write home about they use an
rt
6150 buck boost regulator
with a quiescent current of 60 micro
ampere
so there is still hope i like that they
selected a buck boost regulator
because we can power the 3.3 volt chip
from 1.8 to 5.5 volts
this means that you can connect a lion
or live apo 4 battery directly
to the board as well as two or three aa
batteries
because the pico has no charger you have
to change the batteries yourself
or add an external charger board none of
the cheap competitors offer such a
feature
only more expensive ttgo boards have
lion battery support
then with the charger of course lady ada
also showed her featherboard with the
rp2040
with this feature the price of the board
is also everywhere in the news for linux
guys
a five dollar board is probably cheap
but how does it compare with the direct
competition
the cheaper esp32 boards as well as the
black pills
are in the same price range i did not
include
shipping because it would not be fair
shipping from china still
is cheaper than shipping inside
switzerland
but getting the board from a swiss
supplier is much faster of course
i want to thank pie shop switzerland for
going out of their way
and expediting my order it seems i got
the last board laying on the table of
their boss
thank you very much after all this data
we come to my verdict the raspberry pi
foundation surprised most of us
with this chip and board for me it is
not clear why they created their own
chip
and took a significant financial risk
they could have used a standard
stm32 or even better an espressif chip
with wi-fi maybe there is a larger plan
behind it
q anon or the man on the moon anyway
i do not care for the moment they did a
marvelous job
in documenting the chips as well as the
board
as we saw you can start with using the
micropython
right away adafruit also ported most of
circuit python
so i hope we also can use lots of sensor
libraries
if you are a c-plus plus lover you get
an sdk
and can also start right away
if you like most of us use the arduino
framework
you do not need to hurry i tried to use
the c
plus plus sdk but after four frustrating
hours
i understood why we all love arduino
for the moment i do not see a project
where i need
a pipe pico but for sure i will try it
instead of an esp32
or a blue pill in one of my next
projects
maybe the pico will give micro python or
circuit python a considerable spin in
the right direction
we will see as usual we have to see
if interesting projects use this chip
and here i can imagine that the
raspberry foundation will invest some
time and money
more than expressive or st microsystems
i also like that we have an alternative
to st
or expressive maybe competition helps us
to get better stuff in the future
i'm curious about the next step of the
raspberry pi foundation
it will not be easy for them to
establish a new chip against
an established competition a typical
uphill battle i'm also curious about the
pricing
i still remember when they promoted the
pi zero as
a five dollar computer i never paid five
dollars for such a board
i usually paid around fifteen dollars
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