This installment of Elektor Books presents roughly half a chapter excerpted from Dogan Ibrahim's book Raspberry Pi Pico Essentials published by Elektor in March 2021 and now a bestseller. At that time, it was the first third-party book with tried and tested, real-life dealings with the RP2040 microcontroller onboard the Raspberry Pi Pico module, complete with software to go. Is ‘the Pico’ as accessible as it's claimed to be, and does it live up to its expectations of being a ‘drop-in’ controller board? Let's find out in this article.