🔍 Micro-B TinyPICO Review

I was so excited to receive the downloaded Feather S2 from Unexpected Maker and even more excited to get the small version of it as well as the fully functional PICO, for which this review is intended. It's a beast because it's so small! Lots of GPIOs to use and the added Flash and PSRAM really help with larger programs I can use.

I've just started my micro python journey and found this board through the manufacturer's YouTube channel. This is a great little board. I created a Micropython binary from code after playing around with the espressif toolchain a bit.

I don't really know what I'm going to do with this thing, but the fact that it makes the Raspberry Pi Zero bulky is fantastic.

I bought TinyPico because I thought it would be great for a Bluetooth project idea. Unfortunately BT couldn't connect to my HP Specter or any other Windows 10 PC but it did connect to my Samsung Galaxy except it was littered with data bits and characters. I liked the packaging and it was easy to program with the Arduino. I'm disappointed with BT's performance. I'll try wifi and update later. I programmed TinyPICO as a web server and it worked very well.

I bought TinyPico because I thought it would be great for a bluetooth project idea. Unfortunately, BT didn't connect to my HP Specter or other Windows 10 PC, it did connect to my Samsung Galaxy, but it was littered with bits of data and characters. I liked the packaging and it was easy to program with the Arduino. I'm disappointed with BT's performance. I'll try wifi and update later. I programmed TinyPICO as a web server and it worked very well.

Last year I standardized all my projects on TinyPico. Yes, you can get ESP32 boards for about $20 less, but they're not that small. The ESP32 WROOM chip used in most of these boards is itself about half the size of TinyPico. Also, TinyPico is very light - only one ounce. Power consumption is lower than the Fire Beetle and about 10 times lower than the Adafruit Huzzah32. If you're concerned about size, weight and/or performance, consider drones - that's your microcontroller. The product quality…

It's not much more than the raw esp32 chip itself! While it doesn't have as many I/O pins as its big brother, size is critical for the application I have in mind. Plus, it's a full esp32 with all the performance and storage you expect. A pleasant surprise was the design that doesn't require pressing the "Boot" button to load the Arduino sketches or the Micropython system - so no buttons! Simply download, done! The pins are on the breadboard and it comes with connectors and even two different…