Raspberry Pi announces the Pico W

Raspberry Pi has introduced a successor to last year’s Pico, a $4 microcontroller based on the RP2040 chip the company designed itself. The new model is called the Pico W. It’s basically the same hardware, but it adds, as the name suggests, an 802.11n Wi-Fi radio, making it useful for putting together IoT projects and the like. It’s also more expensive than the standard Pico, coming in at $6.

The company says it added wireless to the Pico using an Infineon CYW43439 chip. Curiously, that chip also supports Bluetooth, but Raspberry Pi says it’s not currently enabled.

While there are accessories available to get your standard Pico attached to a network, they were significantly more expensive and bulkier than having Wi-Fi built into the microcontroller itself - plus they used up valuable pins that could have been attached to other fun accessories.

Source: The Verge