This post shall be a little bit like a blog, where I’ll post all information while investigating the Raspberry PI Pico Controller RP2040 as µC for an AgOpenGPS board. Feel free to make suggestions and ask about it here. And it’s also a list of (hopefully) useful links.
Likely you’ll ask yourself now: Why does this guy want to introduce the next µC? There are already the ones from the Arduino Nano and the Teensy4.1.
Yes, you’re right so far, but look at this video how to program that one. And, no, there is no special software needed at all - simply drag and drop the firmware to the board. Quite sure, that people who just want to use AgOpenGPS will like it. They may stop reading here.
Another reason of importance today is the availability: Seems no prob right now (but don’t beat me, if this is changing in some weeks!).
Next argument: The chip is about $1.
And nevertheless the technical features. Honestly I don’t know where to start…
talks serial and UDP with RNDIS (and many other protocols)
Last but not least programming can be done in a modern language like MicroPython although C is supported as well for sure.
As it is a fully new approach of programming µCs, this manual is a good starting point [do ‘make submodules’ and ‘make clean’ before last ‘make’ on page 5].
In the next time, I’ll expand this post with new information. Right now I’m working with the Arduino RP2040 Connect board and two RTK-1612 boards (photo). Data is already flowing but I didn’t manage to connect to AgOpenGPS so far. If this is done, controlling a motor or valves is only a short step.
For me it’s seems better to keep one contineus developement line - may be there are 1 or 5 or 10 better µC or software solutions but jumping between so many solutions makes not sense for the single users.
We now have v5.5 stable for regular single users so that the finish line is not always jumping ahead of them, v5.6 + Panda for the dev and newest release crowd, and users like @GoRoNb and @KentStuff who are building spaceships and changing the way we view both the hardware and software possibilities.
Not sure if that was a complement or derogatory statement, but I’ll take is as a pat on the back. I do enjoy making it do things it was not supposed to do. Once in a while I stumbled on something that might help others.
We have not launched the space ship yet, but the way things are going in the States, we may have to with a few more years like this one.
Here in the south United States, the confederate flag is nearly outlawed or taboo. Might just give Google something to edit next time they fly over. They might get the idea we’d like to succeed again. As bad as the economy is currently, might have some of our northern neighbors join us. Thanks Joe!!
