The Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller

On 21 January 2021, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Raspberry Pi Pico, a low-cost microcontroller.

On 8 August 2024, they announced the Pico 2 with an RP2350 microcontroller. The initial boards contained a defect that required disabling the pull-downs on its GPIO pins. They released a new A4 stepping on 29 July 2025 with a fix.

Documentation

The Pico SDK Documentation describes the C API.

Software

• pico-umac runs a variant of the umac emulator on an RP2350 to host Mac System 6 or 7.

  • adafruit/pico-mac is the variant used for the Fruit Jam with its own intructions and guide.

  • A testimonial: I ran Photoshop on a £0.60 computer chip - some thoughts about simpler computers

  • The Ruiz Brothers built an entire Mac Classic Fruit Jam kit with it, complete with a 3D printed Mac case.

• wili8jam runs The PICO-8 fantasy console (no other relation to the name of these boards) on a RP2350.

  • PICO-8 Fruit Jam Reality Console describes how to set this up on the Fruit Jam.

• Running Varvara on a Pi Pico 2 describes how to run The Varvara personal computer system on a custom Pico 2 board.

Boards

• Adafruit Fruit Jam contains HDMI, USB-A, microSD, 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM, 5 NeoPixel LEDs, and 3 buttons.

• SparkFun Pro Micro - RP2040 features USB-C and a Qwiic connector.

• Pimoroni PicoSystem has a display and small game system form-factor.

• Pimoroni Tiny 2040 is truly small, the size of a fingernail.

Promising accessories

• Pimoroni Pico Unicorn Pack is an RGB matrix.

• Pimoroni Pico RGB Keypad Base could be made into a macro pad.