Overview

The Raspberry Pi Pico W is a low-cost, high-performance microcontroller board with wireless connectivity. It adds WiFi and Bluetooth to the original Raspberry Pi Pico, making it ideal for IoT and connected projects. The board is based on the custom RP2040 microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi.

Test Status

• Basic Config
• GPIO
• UART
• SPI
• I2C
• I2S
• (LED) PWM
• ADC
• Temperature Sensor
• PIO
• Bluetooth
• USB 1.1 Host

Hardware Features

• Microcontroller: RP2040 (designed by Raspberry Pi)
• CPU: Dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ processor
• Clock Speed: Flexible clock up to 133 MHz
• RAM: 264KB of SRAM
• Flash: 2MB on-board flash memory
• Wireless: Infineon CYW43439 chip
  • WiFi: 802.11n, single-band (2.4 GHz)
  • WPA3 security support
  • Soft AP mode (up to 4 clients)
  • Bluetooth 5.2 (LE Central, Peripheral, and Classic)
• GPIO Pins: 26 multi-function GPIO pins
• ADC: 3 × 12-bit 500ksps Analog-to-Digital Converter channels
• PWM: 16 controllable PWM channels
• Interfaces:
  • 2 × SPI
  • 2 × I2C
  • 2 × UART
  • 8 × Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines
• USB: USB 1.1 with device and host support
• Power Modes: Low-power sleep and dormant modes
• Temperature Sensor: On-chip temperature sensor
• Clock & Timers: Accurate on-chip clock and timer
• Programming: Drag-and-drop programming via USB mass storage
• Debug: 3-pin Serial Wire Debug (SWD) header
• Operating Voltage: 1.8V - 5.5V (input voltage via USB or VSYS)
• Board Dimensions: 51mm × 21mm

Wireless Module Details

The Infineon CYW43439 provides wireless connectivity:

• Connected to RP2040 via SPI (typically 33MHz)
• On-board antenna (licensed from ABRACON/ProAnt)
• Some pins shared due to pin limitations:
  • CLK shared with VSYS monitor
  • DIN/DOUT and IRQ share one RP2040 pin
• Commercial use license included for CYW43439 driver and BTstack

ESPHome Support

✅ Supported Platform: rp2040

The Raspberry Pi Pico W is officially supported by ESPHome with the RP2040 platform.

Important Notes

⚠️ Board Compatibility: Only the original Raspberry Pi Pico W with the Infineon CYW43439 chip is supported. Boards with ESP8285 or similar modules (labeled “RP2040 Pico W-2023”) are NOT supported.

⚠️ Development Status: RP2040 support in ESPHome is still maturing. Some features may have limitations.

Basic Configuration

esphome:
  name: pico-w-device
  friendly_name: "Pico W Device"

rp2040:
  board: rpipicow

Configuration Options

Watchdog Timer

The RP2040 has a built-in watchdog timer that can automatically reboot the device if it hangs:

rp2040:
  board: rpipicow
  watchdog_timeout: 8388ms  # Maximum value (default)
  # Set to 0s to disable watchdog

On-Board LED

⚠️ Important: The on-board LED on the Pico W is NOT connected to GPIO25 like on the non-wireless Pico. It’s controlled by the CYW43439 wireless chip and requires special handling.

Temperature Sensor

The RP2040 has a built-in temperature sensor:

sensor:
  - platform: internal_temperature
    name: "Internal Temperature"
    update_interval: 60s

Other Images

Pico W Back: