PIO state machines programmable in Python sound pretty neat:
> You'll note there's no I2S peripheral, or SDIO, or camera, what's up with that? Well instead of having specific hardware support for serial-data-like peripherals like these, the RP2040 comes with the PIO state machine system which is a unique and powerful way to create custom hardware logic and data processing blocks that run on their own without taking up a CPU. For example, NeoPixels - often we bitbang the timing-specific protocol for these LEDs. For the RP2040, we instead use a PIO object that reads in the data buffer and clocks out the right bitstream with perfect accuracy. Same with I2S audio in or out, LED matrix displays, 8-bit or SPI based TFTs, even VGA! In MicroPython and CircuitPython you can create PIO control commands to script the peripheral and load it in at runtime. There are 2 PIO peripherals with 4 state machines each. [1]
Two M0 cores with M4 speeds and priced lower than usual M0-based boards also sounds exciting:
> The RP2040 is a powerful chip, which has the clock speed of our M4 (SAMD51), and two cores that are equivalent to our M0 (SAMD21). [1]
And official support for MicroPython and USB host and guest for $4 is something rare and could potentially lure some tinkerers into embedded programming.
I personally plan to create an USB ambient light sensor for controlling Lunar [2] with it. It is a very affordable and widely available board which could potentially allow people to reproduce the sensor even in places where I can't ship a pre-assembled board.
For anyone who's ever had to bitbang a protocol (say, RS232), after you've done it once, the "Oh, cool" factor wears off[0], so what they've done here sounds really nice.
[0] It's not hard, it's easy. But who wants to do that?
It actually sounds sort of difficult on those PIOs. All the timing stuff, start and stop bits, parity, flow control, ideally a FIFO, etc. You only have 32 words of instruction memory in each PIO. I wish they had made the PIOs more capable. It's not like they take a lot of die area compared to 264k of ram etc. The Beaglebone PRU's are closer to the right thing.
> You'll note there's no I2S peripheral, or SDIO, or camera, what's up with that? Well instead of having specific hardware support for serial-data-like peripherals like these, the RP2040 comes with the PIO state machine system which is a unique and powerful way to create custom hardware logic and data processing blocks that run on their own without taking up a CPU. For example, NeoPixels - often we bitbang the timing-specific protocol for these LEDs. For the RP2040, we instead use a PIO object that reads in the data buffer and clocks out the right bitstream with perfect accuracy. Same with I2S audio in or out, LED matrix displays, 8-bit or SPI based TFTs, even VGA! In MicroPython and CircuitPython you can create PIO control commands to script the peripheral and load it in at runtime. There are 2 PIO peripherals with 4 state machines each. [1]
Two M0 cores with M4 speeds and priced lower than usual M0-based boards also sounds exciting:
> The RP2040 is a powerful chip, which has the clock speed of our M4 (SAMD51), and two cores that are equivalent to our M0 (SAMD21). [1]
And official support for MicroPython and USB host and guest for $4 is something rare and could potentially lure some tinkerers into embedded programming.
I personally plan to create an USB ambient light sensor for controlling Lunar [2] with it. It is a very affordable and widely available board which could potentially allow people to reproduce the sensor even in places where I can't ship a pre-assembled board.
[1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4864 [2] https://lunar.fyi