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

Soldering the Pico's headers

In this section, we will discuss setting up the Pico for our upcoming projects. This includes soldering the headers and an optional three-dimensional (3D)-printed enclosure.

Soldering the headers

The Pico comes with 40 pins in two rows of 20 pins. We need to solder the headers to access the peripherals of the RP2040 microcontroller for our project.

Important Note

Soldering the headers requires prior training and adult supervision. Do not attempt soldering without prior training. Here is a tutorial on soldering: https://bit.ly/3focmjM.

You can purchase the headers from the same source as the Pico. For example, you could purchase it from the following link: https://bit.ly/3d9rrUT. The steps to be carried out for soldering include the following:

  1. It is easier to solder the headers with a breadboard. Arrange the headers on a breadboard and stack the Pico on top of it, as shown in the following screenshot:
Figure 1.11 – Pico with headers stacked on a breadboard

Figure 1.11 – Pico with headers stacked on a breadboard

  1. If you are not quick at soldering the individual pins, you might end up damaging the breadboard due to the excess heat. The following image shows the pins of the Pico soldered:
Figure 1.12 – Pico on a breadboard

Figure 1.12 – Pico on a breadboard

Now that we have soldered the headers, we are ready to take it for a spin. In the next section, we will review the optional step of adding a reset button to the Pico.