Raspberry Pi Pico W
Solid hardware, good software and Wi-Fi access see this incremental update elevate the Pico to a truly versatile dev board – just how Les Pounder likes it!
W ith a surprise June 2022 release, we see a new Raspberry Pi Pico W – correcting one of the original’s omissions – this $6 microcontroller looks much like its predecessor, but under a tiny silver case lies a Wi-Fi chip that takes the Pico into the world of IoT. It may not be the first RP2040 board to offer Wi-Fi – but we’re sure that the Raspberry Pi Pico W is going to go straight on to our list of best RP2040 boards.
There isn’t really much difference between the original Pi Pico and the new Pico W. There’s the same GPIO, microUSB port, dimensions and SoC. The only difference is the inclusion of Infineon’s CYW43439 2.4GHz Wi-Fi chip. Looking at Infineon’s datasheet for this chip, we spotted that it’s also capable of transmitting Bluetooth 5.2, but in the Pi documentation there’s no mention of this. Eben Upton told us that, as yet, Bluetooth isn’t enabled in the Pico W’s firmware. How long until some enterprising hackers enable Bluetooth on the Pico W for themselves? We shall wait and see.