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

Why gardening?

Why did we choose gardening for our project in this chapter?

Gardening is one of the oldest hobbies. It has periods of upswings, as was the case with the pandemic. While gardening can be embraced at many levels, technology can enhance it, reduce fear of failure, and serve as an educational tool. Sensors and response mechanisms such as watering or lighting tools can help with plants that require extra care, including some houseplants, water plants, orchids, and bonsai trees.

Besides being a generic hobby, gardening can also be used to grow food efficiently in resource-starved environments such as urban settings. With more people living in such settings, it is increasingly important for people to be able to grow at least some of their own food. Homegrown food can also lead to healthy eating and living habits and provide other advantages such as reducing stress and improving mental health. Gardening and urban agriculture on any scale can also help endangered bees...