The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s small computers can be used for anything Homemade cameras to me Cucumber SortersAnd, now, the group is branching out into microcontrollers and custom silicone. Raspberry Pi Pico Is the first step. It’s a new $ 4 microcontroller that’s smaller than the average Pi, and features a dedicated chip powerful enough to be used in machine learning projects (according to the Raspberry Pi Foundation), and it’s now on sale.

in that Introductory blog post, The company explains that today the Raspberry Pis is often actually used in conjunction with a smaller microcontroller:

The Raspberry Pi takes care of the heavyweight, network access, and storage calculations, while the microcontroller handles analog input and I / O with low latency and, at times, provides an extremely low power standby mode.

Now, the company has one of its own.

A first for the microcomputer maker, Pico is powered by a custom in-house designed chip called the RP2040. The Pico Board features the new chip, 2MB flash memory, clickable button, and Micro USB Type-B port. Here are the full specs of the RP2040:

Dual Core Arm Cortex-M0 + @ 133MHz

264 KB (remember KB?) Of on-chip RAM

Support up to 16MB of off-chip flash memory via dedicated QSPI bus

DMA controller

A split integer typeface

30 GPIO pins, 4 of which can be used as analog input

2 x UARTs, 2 x SPI controllers, and 2 x I2C controllers

16 x PWM channels

1 x USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support

8 x Programmable I / O (PIO) Raspberry Pi

USB mass storage boot mode with UF2 support for drag-and-drop programming

These specs may be popping in one ear and exiting the other, but the best way to demonstrate the potential of the new Raspberry Pi product is to see it put to use in something cool. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is partnering with companies like Arduino, Adafruit, and Pimoroni to integrate the new RP2040 chip into other boards and gadgets. There is a full list in the blog post advertising Pico, but there is a little bit of it Pico bimorone system Gaming console, Adafruit’s Feather board RP 2040And Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect.

The Raspberry Pi Pico is now available from Authorized distributors For $ 4. The microcontroller will also be given free of charge in the February editions of HackSpace Magazine.