Everyone’s favorite general-purpose microcontroller manufacturer, Raspberry Pi, has just unveiled a handful of budget-conscious new products. The company is building on the success of its $4 Pico board, which has so far moved just under two million units since its launch in January 2021.
The new Pico W launches today for $6 – the “W” (and an additional $2) brings 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity to the system. The $5 Pico H adds a pre-populated header to interact with other systems; the Pico WH ($7) gives you both. The first two are available now, while WH will ship sometime in August.
As the company notes, its boards have found much success beyond their initial hobbyist and educational purpose, as companies have begun to integrate the controllers directly into their products. More than once in the wild I have seen sophisticated machines controlled by these inexpensive systems.
Interestingly, the company notes that the chip shortage has been a huge boon to sales to third-party manufacturers. “We have always believed that [Pi Pico] was well suited for commercial and industrial applications, but the global shortage of semiconductors has dramatically accelerated adoption,” notes founder Eben Upton in an article. “With millions of units available today and a pipeline in place for tens of millions more, design engineers who have been let down by their current vendors have a perfect excuse to experiment.”
Adding wireless opens up the system to all sorts of interesting networked IoT/smart devices. And the price is certainly right for the company to sell a few million more of these things by this time next year.
techcrunch Gt