Formally launched at present, the Raspberry Pi Pico W is the successor to the Raspberry Pi Pico, Raspberry Pi’s first microcontroller board. Very long time Raspberry Pi followers will know {that a} W on the finish of of product title means Wi-Fi and the Pico W comes with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi all for simply $6.
In our evaluation of the Raspberry Pi Pico W we praised how simple it was to get on-line. Taking a mere 5 strains of MicroPython to attach our undertaking to the world. The Pico W retains GPIO compatibility with the older Pico, however presently third-party addons are speeding to patch their software program libraries to work with the Pico W.
In a launch weblog put up, written by Raspberry Pi LTD CEO Eben Upton, we study that there might be two MicroPython firmwares for each fashions of Pico.
“This UF2 firmware we’re making out there for Pico W is a separate construct to the prevailing MicroPython firmware for our unique Pico board. We’ll be upstreaming the modifications to the principle MicroPython repository quickly after launch, however as MicroPython has separate binaries on a per-board fairly than per-architecture foundation there’ll at all times be two distinct UF2 firmware releases going ahead. One for Pico, the opposite for Pico W.” Eben Upton Raspberry Pi LTD CEO.
Which means addon board producers might want to present two firmware choices for any addon merchandise they launch.
Raspberry Pi Pico W Resellers
Proper now the Raspberry Pi Pico W is accessible by way of official resellers, and a few are imposing a one board per buyer method to make sure that everybody has a good likelihood of selecting up a Raspberry Pi Pico W.
Pimoroni
Proper now UK based mostly reseller Pimoroni have a one board per buyer system in place. The unsoldered Pico W is £6 ($6) on the time of writing, however there’s additionally a Pico WH with soldered header pins for £7.20 ($7), which is at present out of inventory.
Pimoroni are additionally providing a variety of “Pico Aboard” tasks which see the Pico W floor mount soldered to its tasks. From Inky Body ePaper shows, Inventor 2040 W boards, all the way in which up to an enormous Galactic Unicorn RGB LED matrix. All of those merchandise function the Raspberry Pi Pico W at its core.
The Pi Hut
On the time of writing, UK reseller The Pi Hut additionally function a one board per buyer method. The Pi Hut have the Raspberry Pi Pico W in inventory for £5.90 (roughly $6) and still have a placeholder for the WH variant with pre-soldered headers for £6.90 ($6.70). Right now there aren’t any different Pico W merchandise listed.
Adafruit
US based mostly reseller Adafruit are an authorized reseller of Raspberry Pi merchandise and proper now its web site has no entries for Raspberry Pi Pico W. That is all set to vary within the subsequent few hours so count on to see an replace shortly.
CanaKit
Primarily based within the US, CanaKit are at present taking pre-orders for the Raspberry Pi Pico W with a delivery date of July 5.
The naked Raspberry Pi Pico W board is about at $6, however CanaKit are providing two further Pico W kits.
The primary equipment is the $20 Fundamental Equipment which options an 830 gap breadboard, together with header pins and USB cable. The $30 Starter equipment has the identical primary parts because the $20 equipment, but additionally offers a variety of parts reminiscent of resistors, RGB LED, LEDs, buttons and jumper wires.
Yet another factor
Within the official Raspberry Pi Pico W announcement weblog post we additionally see that Upton has introduced an official pre-soldered Raspberry Pi Pico. Sadly this is not the brand new Pico W, fairly the $5 Raspberry Pi Pico H. The Pico H offers the aforementioned soldered headers, and likewise a 3 pin debug connector for the SWD pins. We’ve got but to identify considered one of these on sale.
