Some time again, the Raspberry Pi Basis launched a brand new model of their microcontroller-based board, the Raspberry Pi Pico. The Pi Pico W options the identical highly effective RP2040 microcontroller present in all Pi Zeros, however provides WiFi and Bluetooth with the addition of a small co-processor. It’s a successful combo for any microcontroller fanatic by any measure.
Invector Labs took this concept, ran with it, and got here up with an identical board that provides the capabilities, however in a format that’s a bit extra acquainted to the {hardware} fanatic. The Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BLE makes use of the identical important chip because the Pi Pico, however provides an ESP32-C3FN4 for WiFI and BLE capabilities. It’s additionally appropriate with the Adafruit Feather format and features a 1-cell LiPo battery charger, with every part charging over a USB-C connector.
There’s quite a lot of weight behind the Feather ecosystem, and should you’re on the lookout for a microcontroller board that may be simply powered by battery, you actually can’t discover something higher. The code is nice, too, with Micropython assist, a UF2 bootloader in ROM, and documentation abounds.
On the wi-fi aspect of issues, the Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BE features a RISC-V microcontroller and a pair of.4GHz radio with a AT interpreter offering low-level TCP/UDP performance, net server, MQTT server, and different consumer capabilities. All of that is accessible by the RP2040 over a high-speed UART or SPI channel.
If you wish to get into microcontroller work, the RP2040 is a superb place to start out, and the Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BLE gives quite a lot of performance for a really low worth.
