Raspberry Pi Pico W Carrier Board Brings the Factory Home

With enthusiast microcontroller boards having matured since bringing a revival to hobbyist digital electronics in the mid–late 2000s, it’s become clear to manufacturers that these learning and tinkering tools can just as easily take on more serious roles, for example in industrial automation. They just need the right support.

Increasingly, we’ve been seeing carrier boards that take relatively sensitive single-board computers (SBCs) and outboard the rugged and flexible interfacing you’d expect on the production line. This includes higher-voltage support, CAN bus communication, relays, wire terminals, and DIN rail mounting.

Pimoroni wasted no time bringing us HATs for the purpose designed for Raspberry Pi full-featured models (which are in short supply of late), and now they’ve introduced a carrier board for the easy-to-source Raspberry Pi Pico W.

Automation 2040 W 

Dubbed the Automation 2040 W, it features 2.4 GHz wireless (thanks to the “W” on the Raspberry Pi Pico W), multiple inputs and outputs with screw terminals, Qw/ST (Qwiic / STEMMA QT) connectors, relays, and compatibility with systems up to 40 V.

It adds some much-appreciated versatility to what is already a powerful $5 gum-stick-sized SBC, while eliminating the worry of handling those delicate 3.3 V inputs and outputs.

Pimoroni has a great getting-started guide for this peripheral, where they even show us how to get this solution onto a DIN rail mount, not to mention Python examples for dealing with all of those inputs and outputs. There’s even a web interface for handling all of that automation from one place.
  We can’t wait to see what makers whip up when they spend less time taking care of glue logic and level-shifting.