Book Image

Raspberry Pi Pico DIY Workshop

By : Sai Yamanoor, Srihari Yamanoor
Book Image

Raspberry Pi Pico DIY Workshop

By: Sai Yamanoor, Srihari Yamanoor

Overview of this book

The Raspberry Pi Pico is the latest addition to the Raspberry Pi family of products. Introduced by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, based on their RP2040 chip, it is a tiny, fast microcontroller that packs enough punch to power an extensive range of applications. Raspberry Pi Pico DIY Workshop will help you get started with your own Pico and leverage its features to develop innovative products. This book begins with an introduction to the Raspberry Pi Pico, giving you a thorough understanding of the RP2040's peripherals and different development boards for the Pico designed and manufactured by various organizations. You'll explore add-on hardware and programming language options available for the Pico. Next, you'll focus on practical skills, starting with a simple LED blinking project and building up to a giant seven-segment display, while working with application examples such as citizen science displays, digital health, and robots. You'll also work on exciting projects around gardening, building a weather station, tracking air quality, hacking your personal health, and building a robot, along with discovering tips and tricks to give you the confidence needed to make the best use of RP2040. By the end of this Raspberry Pi book, you'll have built a solid foundation in product development using the RP2040, acquired a skillset crucial for embedded device development, and have a robot that you built yourself.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: An Introduction to the Pico
6
Section 2: Learning by Making
10
Section 3: Advanced Topics

Putting it all together

When you are done testing the display, it is time to assemble it. We initially planned the layout of the entire display on a sheet of plywood, as shown in Figure 6.16:

Figure 6.16 – Planning the layout of the seven-segment display

This enabled us to determine the dimensions of the shadow box needed for the project. We purchased a shadow box and assembled the digits on the back panel of the shadow box, as shown in Figure 6.17:

Figure 6.17 – Seven-segment digits assembled onto the back panel

Since the dual expander board does not come with a mounting hole, we used double-sided tape to stick it to the back side of the shadow box. You should have something like that shown in Figure 6.18:

Figure 6.18 – Giant seven-segment display

The shadow box made it easy to transport for Maker Faire exhibits. We usually power it using a 12 V DC adapter. When an internet connection is...