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CEC Semester Twenty Three 2023

Constructing a Raspberry Pi RP2040 Low-Power Sensor Node

Fred Eady -
Owner, EDTP Electronics Inc. and Principal Engineer, Ongoing Systems LLC.
January 23,
2023
Assembling the RP2040 Linux Toolchain
The documentation that describes the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK claims that by using the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK, one would rarely if ever consult the RP2040 data sheet. We will take them at their word. Today’s lecture will walk you through what it takes to install the latest version of the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK. We will also install the latest Ubuntu-compatible version of Visual Studio Code and configure Visual Studio Code to enable us to access the resources of the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK. After the installation of the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK, IDE, and supporting modules and compilers is complete, we will verify our toolchain by writing some exercise code against some known-good RP2040 hardware.
Course Resources
Special Educational Materials
Hardware Design with the RP2040 Part 3: Soldering and Testing – maker.io project
RP2040 mikroBUS™ Development Board Hookup Guide – maker.io project
Raspberry Pi Pico vs Arduino RP2040 Connect – Blog
January 24,
2023
RP2040 Internals
Our objective this week is to design some IoT hardware that consumes a minimum of man-made energy while executing our user-generated sensor node application. Before we can accomplish the aforementioned design task, we need to understand how the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK accesses and utilizes the RP2040 resources described in the RP2040 data sheet. The best way to pair up the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK API calls with the associated RP2040 hardware is to write some Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK-based firmware routines and attempt to run them on some known-good RP2040 hardware. What we learn today will be used in the custom RP2040 sensor node design we will complete this week.
Course Resources
Special Educational Materials
Hardware Design with the RP2040 Part 3: Soldering and Testing – maker.io project
RP2040 mikroBUS™ Development Board Hookup Guide – maker.io project
Raspberry Pi Pico vs Arduino RP2040 Connect – Blog
January 25,
2023
RP2040 Sensor Node Power Subsystem Design
The title of today’s lecture says it all. We are going to select components to power our RP2040 sensor node. The idea is to keep our sensor node’s battery alive as long as possible while delivering data to the host at specified intervals. To avoid excessive servicing of the sensor node’s battery, we will resort to every dirty little power-saving trick we can come up with.
Course Resources
Special Educational Materials
Hardware Design with the RP2040 Part 3: Soldering and Testing – maker.io project
RP2040 mikroBUS™ Development Board Hookup Guide – maker.io project
Raspberry Pi Pico vs Arduino RP2040 Connect – Blog
January 26,
2023
Data Radio Rodeo
There is absolutely nothing wrong with stringing wires to our RP2040 sensor node. However, Kirk and Spock didn’t do that on TV and don’t count on us doing that here either. There are too many LoRa, 900MHz, Wi-Fi, and 2.4MHz wireless solutions we can pick from. We won’t stoop to planting a garage door opener radio on our sensor node, but we will take a look at some other suitable data radio modules that operate in the ISM band.
Course Resources
Special Educational Materials
Hardware Design with the RP2040 Part 3: Soldering and Testing – maker.io project
RP2040 mikroBUS™ Development Board Hookup Guide – maker.io project
Raspberry Pi Pico vs Arduino RP2040 Connect – Blog
January 27,
2023
Sensor Scan
I’m old enough to remember those early TV “long distance sensor scans” and “sensor probe launches.” We won’t be scanning the galaxy today, but we will take a look at attaching some sensors to our RP2040 sensor node platform.
Course Resources
Special Educational Materials
Hardware Design with the RP2040 Part 3: Soldering and Testing – maker.io project
RP2040 mikroBUS™ Development Board Hookup Guide – maker.io project
Raspberry Pi Pico vs Arduino RP2040 Connect – Blog
Instructor
Fred Eady
Owner, EDTP Electronics Inc. and Principal Engineer, Ongoing Systems LLC.

Fred Eady is the owner of EDTP Electronics Inc. and is the principal engineer at the Georgia branch of Ongoing Systems LLC. EDTP Electronics was established in 1988. In the meantime, Fred has written thousands of magazine articles. He has written for all of the major electronic magazines, including Radio Electronics, Electronics Now, Nuts and Volts, Servo, MicroComputer Journal, and Circuit Cellar. Fred has even done a few short feature articles for Design News. To date, he has authored four books and contributed to a fifth. He currently works as a PIC microcontroller consultant and is a Microchip Authorized Design Partner. Fred’s expertise also extends into the ARM community where he is a hardware and firmware design consultant. His customers include aerospace companies, machine shops, specialty startup companies, medical machine manufacturers, coin-operated device businesses, and various other research and development companies. He has a very close working relationship with Microchip Technology, the manufacturer of PIC microcontrollers, and has taught multiple Ethernet and WiFi classes at Microchip's annual Masters Conference.