Raspberry Pi Pico W

I picked up the Raspberry Pi Pico W for hobby use, and it’s been a fantastic little board to work with. It’s small, affordable, and has just enough power for all kinds of fun projects. The built-in Wi-Fi is a big bonus—makes it super easy to connect things to the internet without needing extra hardware.I’ve been using it with MicroPython, and setup was pretty straightforward. There’s also tons of community support and examples out there, which is great for learning and experimenting.Whether you're into DIY electronics, tinkering, or just exploring microcontrollers, this is an awesome board to have in your kit.

These work as expected and the price is good. In retrospect I would have gotten ones with headers. I've got the header pin strips and soldered them on but unless you have an application where you're going the use the castleated pads to solder the Pico directly on another board the pre-soldered versions are worth the minimal extra cost.

They seem so fair to work well.

Prompt delivery, product exactly as described. Will use this vender again.

Awesome, small, versatile, cheap and does the job well!cons:- the wifi 'antenna' range is kinda short

Paid double plus some compared to MSRP for two Pico W's... The price of a hobby and "shortages" ?The product showed up in a timely fashion and came sealed in the usual factory black ticket case that bulk manufactured electronics are packaged in. Product looks to be a genuine RP2040 version B2 chip, and loaded Micro Python UF2 image without issue.Tested LED blink and WiFi Network scan to list WiFi networks near it. Per Pico W datasheet section 3.4, the LED shares the same pin as the WiFi chip WL_GPIO0. Just quick validation tests, Circuit Python UF2 Image also loaded without issue, did not try any C Code, assuming it works, will update differently if I find it doesn't.All in all happy with the purchase and arrived within a week of ordering.Code clips to quickly test the basics.Micro python Blink test, blinks led every .5 seconds:from machine import Pinimport utimewhile True:led = machine.Pin("LED", machine.Pin.OUT)led.on()utime.sleep(.5)led.off()utime.sleep(.5)Micro python WiFI scan, outputs WiFi network names and raw data:import networkwlan = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF)wlan.active(True)print(wlan.scan())

The micro python firmware file for the pico 2 w that was online was defective and cost me two days of troubleshooting. Had to settle for a firmware version with no Bluetooth/ WiFi for now. Other than that it seems to be working.Delivery time was as expected with Prime.

The traditional Raspberry Pi boards (Linux systems with HDMI monitor capability, etc.) are unobtainable. I enjoyed using those on many past projects. This device is a microcontroller, not a system board. It's not as versatile as the Linux boards, but it does have the advantage of a fast boot time and a lot of useful GPIO pins. I use the Thonny Python IDE on my Linux desktop computer for programming, and that works well. You can easily serve up web pages, accessed on WiFi, with your data. One disadvantage compared with other microcontrollers, such as PICs, is that it's power hungry even in sleep mode.