Maker Brings Wi-Fi to the Raspberry Pi Pico 2W via custom dev board and ESP32

Raspberry Pi.

One thing is for sure, when the Raspberry Pi community wants a new board, they'll just make it themselves. That's exactly what maker and developer Emre has done over at Hackster. We've been super excited since the launch of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 to see makers and companies will make with the new hardware. As the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 doesn't come with Wi-Fi,  Emre has created their own and calls it the Pico 2W Plus dev board.

Emre decided his new board needed something a little extra in the form of wireless support. To pull this off, he threw in an ESP323C microcontroller to go along side it. This module offered two different wireless protocols including both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support. The end result is an RP2350B-based Pico board capable of handling your wireless needs. We made something similar but using the RP2350A board, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2, and published a guide on how to get Wi-Fi on the Pico 2 using an ESP32.

According to Emre, the idea spawned when he realized that Raspberry Pi had yet to release an official board for the RP2350B microprocessor, the larger version of the RP2350 packed with more GPIO pins than the RP2350A on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2. Yes there are multiple variants of the System on Chip used in the newly released Raspberry Pi Pico 2.  The RP2350A has support for only 30 GPIO pins while the RP2350B can support up to 48 GPIO.

(Image credit: Emre)

(Image credit: Emre)

The Pico 2W Plus dev board design features a GPIO and a  few buttons for things like resetting and booting the device. The board has one USB port available as well as a couple of UART, two I2C and two SPI connections. It's important to not that this board isn't available yet but it's still exciting to see what sort of ideas the Pi community is cooking up.

As of writing, Emre has shared a project page detailing the ins and outs of the Pico 2W Plus over at Hackster. This page has plenty of details about the design as well as schematics for how the final PCB is planned to be. Emre asks that anyone whose interested follow his activity for more information as the design is fleshed out and tested.