The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 hit the street this summer as a tiny board designed for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. With a Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller featuring two ARM Cortex-M33 and two Hazard3 RISC-V processor cores, the new model packs more processing power than the original Raspberry Pi Pico that launched in 2021. But it was missing one key feature… until now: wireless connectivity.

Now Raspberry Pi has introduced the new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W. Available now for $7, it costs $2 more than the version without wireless capabilities, but thanks to an Infineon CYW43439 onboard modem, it adds support for 2.4 GHz 802.11n (WiFi 4) and Bluetooth 5.2.

The rest of the board's features are identical to those for the version without the modem. That means you can still choose between RISC-V or ARM processors at startup, you still get 520 KB of memory, 8KB of on-chip antifuse one-time programmable memory, and a bunch of other features including:

  • 2 x UART
  • 2 x SPI controllers
  • 2 x I2C controllers
  • 24 x PWM channels
  • 4 or 8 x ADC channels
  • 1 x USB 1.1 controller and PHY with host and device support
  • 12 x programmable I/O state machines for custom peripheral support
  • 30 or 48 GPIO packages with optional 2MB stacked-in-package QSPI flash storage

    • The board measures 51 x 21mm (2″ x 0.83″) and the RP2350 microcontroller is software compatible with the older RP2040 used in the original Raspberry Pi Pico, which means that software written for the original should work on the new model.

    One big difference between this model and its predecessor? CNX Software reports that when Raspberry Pi released the Raspberry Pi Pico W in mid-2022 it supported WiFi, but not Bluetooth. It took more than half a year for Raspberry Pi to enable Bluetooth support via a software update. But the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W already supports Bluetooth on day one, allowing you to pair Bluetooth accessories like keyboards and mice.

    via Raspberry Pi

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