The Raspberry Pi Pico

A high-performance microcontroller module based on the dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ RP2040 microcontroller running at up to 133 MHz and sporting 264 KB of SRAM, the Raspberry Pi Pico board also has 2 MB of Flash memory. Other attractive features of the Pico are its large number of GPIO pins and popular interface modules like ADC, SPI, I²C, UART, and PWM. To cap it all, the chip offers two programmable I/O (PIO) modules, a hardware debug interface, and an internal temperature sensor.

MicroPython

The Raspberry Pi Pico is easily programmed using popular high-level languages such as MicroPython and or C/C++. The book Raspberry Pi Pico Essentials is an introduction to using the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller in conjunction with the MicroPython programming language. The Thonny development environment (IDE) is used in all the projects described.

There are over 50 working and tested projects in the book. Only basic programming and electronics experience is required to follow the projects. Brief descriptions, block diagrams, detailed circuit diagrams, and full MicroPython program listings are given for all projects described. The program listings can be downloaded from the Elektor web page created to support the book.