The Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W are based on the fast efficient and low-cost dual-core ARM
Cortex M0+ RP2040 microcontroller chip running at up to 133 MHz and sporting 264 KB of SRAM and
2 MB of Flash memory. Besides spacious memory the Pico and Pico W offer many GPIO pins and
popular peripheral interface modules like ADC SPI I²C UART PWM timing modules a hardware
debug interface and an internal temperature sensor. The Raspberry Pi Pico W additionally
includes an on-board Infineon CYW43439 Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chipset. At the time of writing this
book the Bluetooth firmware was not yet available. Wi-Fi is however fully supported at 2.4Â GHz
using the 802.11b g n protocols. This book is an introduction to using the Raspberry Pi Pico
W in conjunction with the MicroPython programming language. The Thonny development environment
(IDE) is used in all of the 60+ working and tested projects covering the following topics:
Installing the MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico using a Raspberry Pi or a PC Timer interrupts
and external interrupts Analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) projects Using the internal
temperature sensor and external sensor chips Using the internal temperature sensor and
external temperature sensor chips Datalogging projects PWM UART I²C and SPI projects
Using Bluetooth WiFi and apps to communicate with smartphones Digital-to-analogue converter
(DAC) projects All projects are tried & tested. They can be implemented on both the
Raspberry Pi Pico and Raspberry Pi Pico W although the Wi-Fi-based subjects will run on the
Pico W only. Basic programming and electronics experience are required to follow the projects.
Brief descriptions block diagrams detailed circuit diagrams and full MicroPython program
listings are given for all projects. The full program listings of all the projects discussed in
the book may be downloaded free of charge from www.elektor.com 20335.
