Raspberry Pi Pico W & Wireless RP2040

Digital GPIO Pins (GP0 - GP28)

26 multi-function 3.3V digital I/O pins with independent pull-up, pull-down, and slew-rate controls.

• All 26 pins support 16 independent hardware PWM channels
• Direct connection to hardware PIO state machines for sub-microsecond pin toggling
• Note: Onboard LED is controlled via CYW43439 wireless chip rather than GP25

Analog ADC Channels (GP26 - GP28)

3 external 12-bit analog input channels (ADC0, ADC1, ADC2) plus internal temperature and voltage channels.

• Reads voltages from 0V to 3.3V with 4096 discrete resolution steps (approx. 0.8 mV per step)
• ADC channel 4 is connected internally to an on-chip silicon temperature sensor
• ADC channel 3 measures VSYS divided by 3 for monitoring battery charge level

Dual SPI, I2C & UART Peripherals

Heavily multiplexed buses that can be routed across almost any GPIO pair.

• Two independent hardware I2C controllers (I2C0, I2C1) supporting up to 1 MHz
• Two high-speed SPI controllers (SPI0, SPI1) running up to 62.5 MHz with DMA support
• Two hardware UART ports (UART0, UART1) supporting high baud rates and FIFO buffers

Wi-Fi 802.11n

CYW43439 SPI Bus

Station (client) and SoftAP (hotspot) modes supporting WPA2/WPA3 personal encryption and HTTP/MQTT networking.

Bluetooth 5.2 LE

CYW43439 SPI Bus

BLE Central and Peripheral roles supporting custom GATT services, temperature beacons, and smartphone links.

Programmable I/O

Any 26 GPIO Pins

8 cycle-accurate state machines capable of generating DVI video, driving LED matrix panels, or emulating SDIO.

Hardware SPI (x2)

Flexible GP Pinout

Dual SPI buses capable of streaming 60 FPS graphical data to ST7789 / ILI9341 color TFT display panels.

Hardware I2C (x2)

Flexible GP Pinout

Dual I2C buses for reading sensor clusters (BME280, MPU6050) without address collisions.

Hardware UART (x2)

Flexible GP Pinout

Dual UART channels for serial debugging, GPS modules, or inter-board packet exchanges.

Use uasyncio with MicroPython on the Pico W to handle multiple concurrent HTTP browser connections without blocking sensor sampling loops.

Pro tip: Asynchronous event loops allow serving interactive web control dashboards while simultaneously polling I2C sensors at 100 Hz.

Unlike the original Pico (where the LED is wired to GP25), the Pico W routes the onboard LED through the CYW43439 chip.

Pro tip: In the C++ SDK, initialize the wireless chip with cyw43_arch_init() before controlling the LED via cyw43_arch_gpio_put().

Launch dedicated C++ routines or MicroPython threads onto Core 1 using _thread to eliminate timing jitter from wireless networking.

Pro tip: Use hardware spinlocks or queue mailboxes to pass sensor data between Core 0 and Core 1 safely.

The Pico W includes an internal voltage divider connecting the VSYS power rail to internal ADC3 (GPIO29) to measure remaining battery capacity.

Pro tip: Turn on the internal wireless chip powersave mode (CYW43_POWERSAVE_MODE) to extend battery life by 5x.

Execute custom cycle-perfect assembly to sample GPIOs or bit-bang protocols without loading either Cortex-M0+ CPU core.

Pro tip: PIO can read bidirectional encoder signals at multi-megahertz frequencies without missing a single pulse.

Hold the BOOTSEL button while inserting the USB cable. The Pico W mounts as a standard flash drive (RPI-RP2) on any OS for instant flashing.

Pro tip: The BOOTROM is permanently etched in silicon and cannot be corrupted or bricked by bad user code.

Connected IoT & Cloud Dashboards

Transmits telemetry over Wi-Fi to AWS IoT, Adafruit IO, or ThingSpeak using MicroPython sockets or lightweight HTTP/MQTT clients.

High-Speed Cycle-Accurate Protocol Emulation

Uses 8 PIO state machines to drive addressable RGB NeoPixel matrices, generate composite/DVI video, or read high-speed optical encoders.

Battery-Powered Environmental Monitors

Integrated buck-boost converter accepts 1.8V to 5.5V from LiPo, 3x AA, or solar cells with low standby current draw.

Wireless Bluetooth HID & Keyboards

Emulates wireless BLE keyboards, gamepads, and macro decks running CircuitPython or custom bare-metal C++ firmware.

# Raspberry Pi Pico W - MicroPython Web Server
import network
import socket
import time
from machine import Pin

led = Pin("LED", Pin.OUT)
wlan = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF)
wlan.active(True)
wlan.connect("Your_WiFi_SSID", "Your_WiFi_Password")

while not wlan.isconnected():
    time.sleep(0.5)

print("Connected! IP:", wlan.ifconfig()[0])

# Open socket on port 80
s = socket.socket()
s.bind(('', 80))
s.listen(5)

while True:
    conn, addr = s.accept()
    request = str(conn.recv(1024))
    
    if '/light/on' in request:
        led.on()
    elif '/light/off' in request:
        led.off()
        
    html = "<html><body><h1>Volt X Pico W</h1><p><a href='/light/on'>ON</a> | <a href='/light/off'>OFF</a></p></body></html>"
    conn.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK\nContent-Type: text/html\n\n' + html)
    conn.close()

#include "pico/stdlib.h"
#include "pico/cyw43_arch.h"

int main() {
    stdio_init_all();
    
    // Initialize the CYW43439 wireless chip architecture
    if (cyw43_arch_init()) {
        printf("Failed to initialize CYW43 wireless chip\n");
        return -1;
    }
    
    // Connect to Wi-Fi in Station Mode
    cyw43_arch_enable_sta_mode();
    printf("Connecting to Wi-Fi...\n");
    if (cyw43_arch_wifi_connect_timeout_ms("SSID", "PASSWORD", CYW43_AUTH_WPA2_AES_PSK, 30000)) {
        printf("Failed to connect\n");
    } else {
        printf("Connected successfully!\n");
    }

    // Toggle onboard LED through CYW43 chip
    while (true) {
        cyw43_arch_gpio_put(CYW43_WL_GPIO_LED_PIN, 1);
        sleep_ms(500);
        cyw43_arch_gpio_put(CYW43_WL_GPIO_LED_PIN, 0);
        sleep_ms(500);
    }
}