Upon Raspberry Pi‘s release of their first-ever microcontroller board, the foundation also put together a book featuring 139 pages of comprehensive instructions and beginner level tutorials, whether you are a skilled developer, or just playing Pico for the first time, it’s an absolute must-have.

It’s named “Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico”, you can get it right here.

To us, having a book is not enough, if you are a long-time Arduino user, you already know that component-hunting here and there is rather time-consuming. If you are a complete microcontroller noob, you can easily get overwhelmed by various peripheral lists, communication protocols, etc. The learning curve tends to be steep.

Our suggestion? Stick to the book.

With a carefully selected list of components that appeared in the original guidebook, we have made a cool learning kit for those who’d give this RP2040-powered Raspberry Pi a try.

Chapter 5 of the book offers a step-by-step tutorial on building A puffin crossing traffic light system.

What you will learn:

• Controlling multiple LEDs with Pico.
• Setting intervals.
• Threading w/ MicroPython.

Wiring diagram:

Video tutorial:

Chapter 6 teaches you how to build a multi-player game in which the quickest button-presser wins.

What you will learn:

• IRQs and Callbacks in MicroPython.
• Monitoring and comparing latencies between several button presses.

Wiring diagram:

Video tutorial:

Chapter 7 demonstrates a cool burglar alarm system with motion detection sensors and buzzers.

What you will learn:

• How to control PIR sensors.
• How to control buzzers.

Wiring diagram:

Video tutorial:

In chapter 8, you will learn how to use RP2040’s built-in ADC (analog-to-digital converter) to monitor the temperatures of the board and fading a LED with PWM.

What you will learn:

• How to read a potentiometer.
• Linear potentiometer versus logarithmic potentiometer.
• The differences between analog input and digital input.
• PWM control.

Video tutorial:

Chapter 10 walks you through two of the most important communication protocols and instructions on how to use SPI/I2C LCDs.

What you will learn:

• The difference between Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI).
• Using I2C/SPI displays

Wiring diagram:

Video tutorial:

Chapter 9 lands on how data logging works and how you can monitor and save temperature logs on the pico.

What you will learn:

• File systems on Raspberry Pi Pico.
• How to store data on it.

Video tutorial:

Appendix C is about what makes the Raspberry Pi Pico truly special: Programmable IO.

What you will learn:

• How programmable IO works.
• How to control LED strips with PIO.

Wiring diagram:

Video tutorial:

If you’ve had experience coding with C, C++, MicroPython, or even Assembler, this new RPi microcontroller is definitely another toy interesting enough for a try-out.

Consider the above projects as Pico appetizers that aim to help you get familiar with the platform, here’s how we serve our dinner:

• TinyML Machine Vision Kit
• Arducam Pico4ML: An RP2040-Powered Board Built for TFLite Micro and Beyond