I didn't realize there is a Pico W. So this is a pleasant surprise. I've been wanting something like this. The stuff I do with Pis is really low power, so getting a full Zero W seems wasteful and...
I didn't realize there is a Pico W. So this is a pleasant surprise. I've been wanting something like this. The stuff I do with Pis is really low power, so getting a full Zero W seems wasteful and overly complicated. I've been messing around with lower level electronics in my free time recently (some ICs, discrete transistors, etc.). Making a little IoT thingy could be fun. Maybe something running off of solar power?
The W is great. One minor pain point, the LED is no longer directly accessible via a pin from the CPU (pin 25 on the OG Pico) but instead is tied to a pin on the Wifi chip. This is a compile-time...
The W is great. One minor pain point, the LED is no longer directly accessible via a pin from the CPU (pin 25 on the OG Pico) but instead is tied to a pin on the Wifi chip. This is a compile-time architecture-dependent variable in the "blink" example project, but most (all?) of the other example projects don't include this distinction, which can lead to some confusion.
And yeah, especially for portable purposes they're great. Assuming power draw of ~50mA, you can power one off of a CR2032 (coin cell battery) for about 5 hours. That's assuming it's running at full power draw the entire time, looks like it can drop to 10uA in sleep mode.
I helped my wife with a project that uses a Pico W to read a sensor and send notifications to her cell phone, which was pretty fun. We've only used them plugged into a USB port or with a USB wall...
I helped my wife with a project that uses a Pico W to read a sensor and send notifications to her cell phone, which was pretty fun. We've only used them plugged into a USB port or with a USB wall adapter, so I haven't dug into power consumption much.
From what I've heard, Picos aren't really known for ultra low power consumption - there are other boards that could run on a coin battery for a long time. But maybe the new one is improved?
I didn't realize there is a Pico W. So this is a pleasant surprise. I've been wanting something like this. The stuff I do with Pis is really low power, so getting a full Zero W seems wasteful and overly complicated. I've been messing around with lower level electronics in my free time recently (some ICs, discrete transistors, etc.). Making a little IoT thingy could be fun. Maybe something running off of solar power?
The W is great. One minor pain point, the LED is no longer directly accessible via a pin from the CPU (pin 25 on the OG Pico) but instead is tied to a pin on the Wifi chip. This is a compile-time architecture-dependent variable in the "blink" example project, but most (all?) of the other example projects don't include this distinction, which can lead to some confusion.
And yeah, especially for portable purposes they're great. Assuming power draw of ~50mA, you can power one off of a CR2032 (coin cell battery) for about 5 hours. That's assuming it's running at full power draw the entire time, looks like it can drop to 10uA in sleep mode.
I helped my wife with a project that uses a Pico W to read a sensor and send notifications to her cell phone, which was pretty fun. We've only used them plugged into a USB port or with a USB wall adapter, so I haven't dug into power consumption much.
From what I've heard, Picos aren't really known for ultra low power consumption - there are other boards that could run on a coin battery for a long time. But maybe the new one is improved?