I see a Wallace and Gromit rabbit hole here haha Eventually he fully automates his youtube channel production with picos and other controllers. Automated recording, editing and uploading, machine learning based video ideas from analytics. Only, he is still the host, and the machines are now his boss. But at least there is infinite tea.
My first thought when you started that board was "Oh look, a Cylon." Then having your By Your Command title straight afterwards really tickled my funny bone. Small things amuse small minds I guess. Good episode, as always.
I am an experienced amateur programmer, having programmed PICs, Arduinos, BBC Micro:bits etc for years. I have bought two Picos along with 3rd party experimenting boards and struggled for a while adjusting my thinking to programming the Pico. I have read some very wordy documents from these suppliers, possibly too quickly, and missed one or two crucial bits of information before starting my experimenting. Having watched your very clear video this morning I immediately discovered where I was going wrong and all is now well. You have done it yet again Chris, do keep producing your excellent videos! There are lots of us out here that will watch everything you produce because we will always learn something new and very useful from them. More tutorials on using the Pico itself would be most welcome. Many thanks to you!
Thanks for this -- great to hear you have things working. I have a follow-up Pico I/O video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TDj2kcSA-68.html -- and another Pico planned, currently for May 1st, although that may change.
I’ve never used a micro controller but I appreciate their simplicity in doing a single job well. No lengthy boot times, updates or antivirus to worry about. I’m thinking of all sorts of home automation ideas.
@Hilldweller ... Or maybe not? When I think "simplicity", I very explicitly don't think "add it to the internet". Instead I think stuff like "use headphone connectors to network them!"
Another important difference is that [most] micro controllers support analogue sensors whereas something like the Raspberry Pi only supports digital sensors.
It's literally the first thing I did, too. Reminds me of when I first started learning Assembler. It was back in the day when DOS programs always had a copyright string on startup. There was a very specific sense of accomplishment seeing it print *my* copyright string for the very first time. And that sense of "w00t!" still arrives with every initial "hello world," whether it be text, blinking lights, or whatever, decades later.
Another popular microcontroller is the ESP32-PICO-KIT, or any number of variants of the ESP32. It would be nice to see a comparison between the RP PICCO and the ESP32 PICCO. Great content as always and thanks for sharing.
Chris - thank you for another fun and informative video. I appreciate your dry humor. As I sit in now unfrozen Texas on Sunday mornings, I tell my wife it is time to listen to my favorite Brit. Personally, I would appreciate more microcontroller videos, especially looking at communications between the microcontroller and a single board computer using, say, SPI. However, I will comment that, with the advent of the Pico, there is more overlap with another of my favorite channels - Dronebot Workshop. In an ideal world, the two of you could collaborate on some videos, but who knows? Again, thank you for another enjoyable Sunday morn!
I'm starting to think I was lucky there weren't these kinds of toys when I was a kid. If there had been, I would have never left my room... except maybe for a monthly visit to an electronics store.
In the 80s and early 90s I had an electronic components store on my way home from primary school. It was mandatory visit every single day and guys there were very helpful with dropping hints on resistor, LEDs, small DC motors. They influenced my life very much and in a good way.
@@SergiuszRoszczyk You lucky bastard! I needed to take a 30 minute bus drive and walk for another 15 minutes to get to the electronic component store. And the staff there wasn't interested at all to help a young kid in his projects. Later I found a TV repair shop around 15 minute bike ride from home. Component selection wasn't that great, but the owner was always ready to help and almost always found a substitute component when I showed him the schematics.
I’m looking forward to a day when I have time to tinker with things such as this again. Teaching remotely has kept me away from being able to explore how I could use something like this. I know I’d enjoy seeing what you’d do with it, if you’re so inclined. Cheers!
I don't think there has ever been a retail product that has been so affordable and yet you can do so many different things with it. In addition to microcontroller functionality, you can also use it as a directly programmable computer by installing Picomite and writing/running BASIC programs on the Pico itself via terminal software. At the default 133 MHz speed I'd estimate it's 50 times faster at interpreted BASIC than a Commodore 64. Not to mention it'll happily run at 250 MHz. The low power consumption when underclocked makes it ideal for managing my solar-powered motion sensor light system where I want to maximize battery life as much as possible. It's a great little device.
When the Pico was released , I didn't buy it as I thought I didn't need it as I have many other micro-controllers , But as soon as i saw your video and satisfying electronic imagery ,I feel I should buy one....
I know, I held off buying the PyBoard (-or rather a clone-) because I though "that would be like buying the kitchen sink" [proverbial] and "seeing as I have everyting BUT the kitchen sink already, I'll probably get by". But then it was Three-pound Sixty, plus an order from either CPC or Pi/Hut¦Moroni (which was going to happen anyway). Now, seeing as I have two "Black Pills" (the lesser and the great) it was not a stretch to end up with two Picos already (from qualitatively different sources). If a system is good and keenly priced AND vulnerable to ham-fistedness in its usual use, it's probably worth having a back-up.
Awesome ! I got one of these in a Kit with accessories in a bundle when I bought my pi400. When it arrived I had no ruddy idea what it was, now I do, thanks Chris !
Great video Chris! I am wanting to teach a younger family member some electronics / programming and the format of this video will be nice start to get the ball rolling. Would be very excited to see some 2 wheel robot motor control examples and some examples of using sensors. Much love from Sheffield, 8-bit.
A good, simple add on to his program would be to add code to take one of the GPIO inputs, and add a trigger to start, then maybe count the number of trigger presses and make that many iteration loops ... aka the old SIMON game.
Oh yes, please do. And not just microcontrollers but also components, specifically those useful for smarthome designs: sensors, relays, converters etc. Thank you!
I just bought a Raspberry pi pico on a whim while I was ordering some other components. This was absolutely the introductory video I needed, thanks for the work you put in to making it.
Great video for people like me who bought a Pico entirely on the basis of it being $4 and being familiar with Raspberry Pi as a computer but with no programming experience. I now have a $4 flashing LED, the world is my oyster!
Yes Chris, after that introduction to a Pico controller I am keen to see where you want to go with it. Another top video for a Sunday's evening viewing. Thanks.
Much appreciated. You explained the basics of getting the Pico up and running very simply and clearly. Yes - please do go ahead with a further video on additional I/O tasks.
Great that you’ve introduced the Pico, Chris. I’ve been programming on mine since January in C. Working on making a fuel injection controller out of the Pico.
@Jim McIntosh thanks Jim. I have the programming completed, using both cores, and the Pico is plenty fast enough. I have breadboarded all the external circuits, and that’s working, with simulated sensor input. Working on designing the pcb now.
@Jim McIntosh that’s my hope. I’ve used Megasquirt before (and a much older Holley). If this thing works, I’ll post on the Pico Forum, because there may be others interested. What I like is that I totally understand the end to end solution, and all parts are cheap and replaceable. I plan to build two, so that I have a spare for roadtrips.
Excellent timing -- my Pico arrived a day ago. Coming from Arduino/ESP32 and C, your intro was spot on informative. I would look forward to another Pico project.
I think more Pico content would be fantastic! I got my pico a couple of months ago, and haven't yet been struck by inspiration as to what I should do with it.
@Hilldweller Exactly what I thought when writing that comment. Sadly my experience of forth is limited to my brief interest in minecraft circa ten years ago.
Excellent explanation, sir. Having never worked with microcontrollers, this video sparked some interest for me as it doesn't seem as complicated as I thought it was for all of these years.
Thanks, Chris, very good presentation. I hope you will not stop here and go deeper explaining multicore, interruptions/irq, exceptions. memory control, stacks, registers and all other good stuff which is usually taken care by OS and now we have to do it by our self.
This small affordable device points the way to distributed processing. Like imagine a robot 🤖🦾 hand or leg 🦿basically controlling itself partially. Like I heard legs of an octopus 🐙 control themselves. So YES... please continue! Thank you! Have some tea! 🍵
Just got my kit last week. Will be going through the examples soon. Possibly you could expound on the differences between the Pico and the Arduino? I know the latter isn't anywhere near dead yet, but it'll be interesting to see the differences between the two, for a given project. Thanks for another great video Chris. 👍
I was not very interested in Pico since I was happy with Arduino Uno and nano. but after watchinh your video I have changed my mind and going to purchase a Pico ASAP. Thank you very much.
Thanks Chris. I particularly enjoyed the "cup of tea" comment! I could do with a good reason to learn python, so please do take us into the world of microcontrollers. Anything which can get processing jobs done quicker and cheaper is worth looking at, and this tiny controller looks like a great introduction to the genre
Raspberry Pi Foundation may have been concerned that including tea making functionality would have caused users to defenestrste themselves... (Father Ted reference)
Hi Chris, Thank you for the fine introduction to the Raspberry Pi Pico. I'd like to see more content about microcontrollers on this channel. For example: - Connecting the Pico to a classic Raspberry Pi computer. Preferably using I2C, but any protocol and connection would be fine. - Using the PIO state machines for something exciting - more LEDs! - Using interrupts on microcontrollers - The Teensy family of microcontrollers, maybe used for running ML/neural networks Please consider these topics. Thanks!
Bonjour Chris, Great introduction video, especially for beginners who benefit from your explanation of the difference between micro controllers and micro computers. I've been evaluating the Pico for my project, however; the major feature that it lacks in my opinion is some wireless communication option. Therefore a Wifi-Bluetooth video would be a great topic in the future. Thanks again for you great video.
Great. Especially the explanation about the difference between microcontrollers and computers. And you are lucky with your power bank. Mine turns off automatically after a few minutes because the Pico's power consumption is too low. (even when flashing LEDs and operating a small buzzer)
Yes, yes, more microcontroller content please. I agree with @Parrot Raiser, that a video or even a series on tea making with the Pico would definitely be in order.
It's been pretty great in my experience. I just finished a project with serial bluetooth, hid, and basic inputs. The C++ library space is fairly thin at the moment, so a lot of it had to be done by hand, but once I programmed it, everything just kinda worked as expected which was nice. And the best part is that it's fast with lots of memory despite being only $4. I've already got another project in the works.
Chris your well presented videos have opened up a whole new world of exciting computer project ideas, I for one would be grateful should you decide to include further micro controller projects like this one. Many thanks for your inspiration.
I love your videos. I would like to see more Pico videos, perhaps using them in conjunction with the regular pi's. Looking forward to more of your videos.
Most Excellent Tutorial. And I wholly agree it is indeed very exciting. I had to go order a couple of these and start playing. Found another tutorial on hooking up a 1602 display to use as a temperature display. Well done. Thank you sir.
@@ExplainingComputers Yes indeed. I'm hooked on the beautiful simplicity of the Pico. With your basic tutorial it demonstrates how the whole works. I was demonstrating this flashing of LED lights on the bread board to my GF. She wasn't impressed until I explained that most any consumer electrical device has built in logic. Everything on the planet has some type of micro chips logic built in. Then she smiled and walked away. Like ok? LoL
I had not yet heard of the pico, but I have used an Arduino in the past. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the Pico and a modern Arduino model. Thanks!
This episode must have been made before the issue of the Arduino IDE 's homespun code for the Pico. I just downloaded this weekend and it looks very promising. Adafruit has put out a video using their RP2040 Feather running on this library.
This is a FANTASTIC development from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and is long overdue. For the last little while it seemed the area of Single Board Computers (SSBs) was going in the direction of mini/micro computing with an operating system to be used in the area of home computing. This being a programable micro controller demonstrates the true potential of this technology at an extremely lost cost which previously wasn't available -- even to industry. Here is my wish for a demonstration I would like you to do. First you would need four boards of wood, and on each board would be mounted three household lighting fixtures (not leds on a bread board). Each board of wood would represent a traffic light (Red, Yellow, Green). Thus you have two traffic lights per intersection and with four boards you have enough traffic lights for two intersections. With the Pi Pico you would control the traffic of a busier street of a mythical (or imagined) village. This would demonstrate the real world potential of such a device. It would also be great if you ran it over at least a 24 hour period and monitored the temperature of the board during this time. A device such as this (even though it is a consumer product and not an industrial one) has the potential to save industry and municipalities millions of dollars (pounds, euros, yens, etc.) per year in operating costs. I look forward to further demonstrations of this device.
If I missed you saying it, forgive me. But something I find cool thing about this particular microcontroller is that it's dual core, giving it 2 threads. That sets it apart from a LOT of microcontrollers out there. :)
Great video. I have a couple Picos sitting on my desk and I havent had time to play around with them, yet. But, I do have a couple of ideas waiting for the moment that I do. More videos on the Pico would be appreciated!
I learned to program microcontrollers on a pic 16f887 on assembler language at the uni. My professor tell us that even if you can program it on C, it's always better to program on assembler, because one must look for performance and also the risk of run out of memory.
