OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder
can be found on the Tom’s Hardware Pi Cast chatting about Raspberry Pis day in day out.
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder can be found on the Tom’s Hardware Pi Cast chatting about Raspberry Pis day in day out.
Just like the original Raspberry Pi Pico, the new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 has no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth J connectivity. There will be a Pico 2 W, which has been confirmed by Raspberry Pi co-founder and CEO Eben Upton, but it is still a few months off yet. So, what can we do in the meantime?
Using an Adafruit Airlift FeatherWing, we can hack in wireless internet access. This board is essentially an ESP32, an already formidable Wi-Fi-enabled microcontroller. You may be asking, “Why?” Because we can – and there may be an edge case that requires the power of the new RP2350 via a Wi-Fi connection.
To demonstrate how to use data from the internet, we’ll create a simple and fun project that downloads a humorous Chuck Norris ‘fact’ using an API (application programming interface) that formats the returned data into a format called JSON.
Featherweight
Adafruit’s Feather range of boards use a different pinout to the Raspberry Pi Pico 2, so we’ll need header pins soldered to the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and to the FeatherWing Airlift (www.adafruit.com/product/4264). As we are using both boards in a breadboard, the included male headers will suffice.
Not quite as neat as having built in Wi-Fi, that’s for sure!
YOU NEED
> Pico 2 or Pico 1
> Adafruit Airlift FeatherWing co-processor
> 8x M2M jumper wires
> Breadboard
YOU NEED
> Pico 2 or Pico 1