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I like the RP2040

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Re: I like the RP2040

#171

Post by weinzierl »

I think the PIO state machines are pretty cool and relatively unique. I am also glad the Foundation resisted the temptation to market them as extra cores and sell the RP2040 as 10-core processor.

When it comes to the Raspi Pico and similar devices[1], I think UF2 flashing is the best thing since sliced bread. This alone lowers the barrier for beginners significantly.

Things I don't like: power consumption.

But you can't have everything...

[1] I know it is not restricted to RP2040 boards, but I think it is nowhere as common as there.

Re: I like the RP2040

#172

Post by crote »

nickcw wrote: post #31

If you are an electronics hobbyist but don't want to make/design your own surface mount boards (like me) there are lots of very accessible RP2040 boards at very low prices. I've used it in the Raspbery Pi Pico ($5) which comes on a nice board with lots of IO. There is a W version for a bit more with WiFi. If you don't mind slightly less IO then you can order an RP-2040 Zero. I got 6 off AliExpress for about $12. Thes…

I also highly recommend shopping around for alternative RP2040-based dev boards. The official Pi Pico is surprisingly bad, and just about every alternative out there is better in one way or another.

I mean, come on: no reset, huge form factor, only 2Mbit flash, micro USB - in 2024? Just about the only pro it has is that it is widely available.

Re: I like the RP2040

#174

Post by dfox »

crote wrote: post #153

I have mixed feelings about the RP2040. On the one hand, it's a great chip for hobbyists. It's cheap, it's easily available, it's easy to build a board around, and it offers plenty of stuff for your average application. On the other hand, it's definitely a bit lacking from a professional perspective. The peripherals are fine , but once you start looking into the details it's easy to run into limitations. That XIP int…

I suspect that the Synopsys DesignWare SSI macro in RP2040 can in fact be used for R/W PSRAM or FRAM, but the abridged documentation of it in RP2040 datasheet is not sufficient for one to configure it that way.

Re: I like the RP2040

#175

Post by stefan_ »

crote wrote: post #153

I have mixed feelings about the RP2040. On the one hand, it's a great chip for hobbyists. It's cheap, it's easily available, it's easy to build a board around, and it offers plenty of stuff for your average application. On the other hand, it's definitely a bit lacking from a professional perspective. The peripherals are fine , but once you start looking into the details it's easy to run into limitations. That XIP int…

What do you mean by USB-C PHY? USB-C is the connector, and you can run USB 1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1 through it, but realistically a RP2040 can not feed even a USB 2.0 PHY.

Re: I like the RP2040

#176

Post by dragontamer »

dave78 wrote: post #89
Havoc wrote: post #18

How are people using this in practice? I’ve never worked with a BGA device. I’m guessing you need to design a board send it to say pcbway and then have the equipment to solder the bga in?

I built a custom RP2040-based board by designing it KiCad and then sending it off to JLCPCB to be fabbed and they assembled the SMT components. I didn't do a direct comparison, but it was cheap - cheap enough that it's possible that getting the board pre-assembled from JLC was cheaper than buying the raw parts in low quantities from Digikey and assembling it myself (which, given my experience level, would be pushing…

> To do a decent PCB layout you'll need to use very small passives in order to get the placement right.

0402 (inches) is small but doable. They really start to feel like grains of sand at that point.

But I personally stick with 0805 and 0603 when doing my own board layouts. I can't say I've ever felt space constrained. The placement of decoupling capacitors can be a few mil off, and in fact the "extra space" for placement helps your tweezers anyway, so you don't really want to push everything so close together.

Especially for hobby projects, I don't think anyone is really in the business of counting up the savings of 0.01" in the hobby world. Like, how small are you actually aiming for, and is it really so bad that you can't add another 0.5" to your board?

--------

Professionals use 0201 (inches) for maximum flexibility and minimal sizes. So even 0402 is larger than professional projects. If we're all accepting "larger hobbyist sizes" anyway, might as well go all the way up to the much easier 0603 or 0805 parts.

While a 0402 is slightly larger than a grain of sand, I'd say 0805 is approximately the size of a grain of rice. So yeah, doable with tweezers and solder paste. Just imagine lining up dry rice and its well within the capabilities of most hobbyists.

Its just problematic when you get smaller than that.

Re: I like the RP2040

#177

Post by topspin »

cockings wrote: post #5
written-beyond wrote: post #2

Inb4 esp32

It's mentioned in the article.

That bit of snark is about the ESP32 brigade that plagues every project or story that involves any non-ESP32 MCU, including this one. Yesterday I watched a long live video by the engineer of a open source engine management system, and he too had to deal with the ESP32 brigade in live chat. He has entirely reasonable technical justifications for his choices, and his explanation had about as much impact with the ESP32 brigade as I've come to expect.

Re: I like the RP2040

#178

Post by dfox »

rdlw wrote: post #102
HyulianGrader wrote: post #12

nit: There are 6 different espressif microcontrollers in that table, not "dozens". Espressif also went many years with only the ESP8266, then many years more after introducing the ESP32 before this recent binge of releasing a new series every time they blink. ESP-IDF is really suffering for it, so I hope Raspberry avoid this fate or at least find a better way to support them all.

https://products.espressif.com/#/product-selector?language=e... This is the official Espressif "ESP Product Selector". I checked everything in the ESP series, and limited to "Mass Production" status, and then it showed me a list of 175 products. I'm sure some of those are doubled up, or just the same chip with different packaging options or whatever, but as a potential customer I'm still presented with 175 things and…

Most of that are not bare microcontrollers (or “SoC”s as Espressif calls it), but entire modules with different combinations of SoC, Flash, PSRAM, antenna configuration and packaging. If you filter only SoCs, you get 39 products, which in fact are 9 different chips and rest are packaging variants and versions with package-on-package Flash.

Re: I like the RP2040

#179

Post by mdp2021 »

weinzierl wrote: post #171

I think the PIO state machines are pretty cool and relatively unique. I am also glad the Foundation resisted the temptation to market them as extra cores and sell the RP2040 as 10-core processor. When it comes to the Raspi Pico and similar devices[1], I think UF2 flashing is the best thing since sliced bread. This alone lowers the barrier for beginners significantly. Things I don't like: power consumption. But you ca…

> Things I don't like: power consumption

I understand it could use ~0.08W, given it draws 3.3V at ~24mA... I am not a specialist, is that a lot?

Ref.: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/rp2040-thing-plus-hooku...

Re: I like the RP2040

#180

Post by adriancr »

peteforde wrote: post #120

I also like the RP2040, but I'd like to explain why I migrated away from it for my current project. First, the drama with PlatformIO really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm taking the side of the developers who are hurt by confusion in tooling. Second, the top of the line ESP32-S3 comes in a module format that can be dropped on a PCB with basically nothing but a few decoupling capacitors. The RP2040 requires careful plac…

> First, the drama with PlatformIO really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm taking the side of the developers who are hurt by confusion in tooling.

I'm out of the loop, have been using rp2040 since launch and never used platformIO.

How did you use it and what rubbed you the wrong way?

Developing locally either with cmake and pico sdk or micropython seems very easy... why add platformio in the mix?

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