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Review: Picking up a Pico
Quoting: DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. —
In early April I shared that I'd been experimenting with an add-on device to the Raspberry Pi series of computers. The device, called a Sense HAT, provides sensors, lights, and a joystick interface for programmers to use in order to allow the device to interact with its environment. It was good fun to play with and, through the power of some Python libraries, wonderfully easy to use.
As someone pointed out in the comments of that article, it seemed to be the most fun I'd had playing with technology for a while and the Sense HAT experiments sparked a good deal of fun. With that in mind, I turned my attention to another member of the Raspberry Pi family. This tiny device is called a Pico and it's a microcontroller. This means that it's basically a tiny computer, but without any of the usual ports to attach a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. The Pico optionally comes with connector pins and also optionally includes a wireless network add-on. I decided to pick up one with both the pins and wireless capability. The little Pico, which is about the size of my pinkie finger, costs a little under $10.