Raspberry Pi Direct To Promote RP2040 Chips for 70 Cents

The Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and its RP2040 chip had been the shock electronics information of 2021. Not simply because this was the primary foray into microcontrollers for the corporate, but additionally as a result of they got here at an eye-opening value (launched at simply $4 for the board and $1 for the chip) together with a shock quantity of energy. Plus, in a yr of huge chip and element shortages, these had been truly out there.

Quite a few outdoors distributors shortly adopted the RP2040 chips into their very own designs, and the corporate has managed a balancing act of utilizing them in their very own Pico and supplying them to different producers. Now, to make that course of much more environment friendly, they introduced Raspberry Pi Direct, a brand new instrument to allow bulk orders of their RP2040 chips in reel configurations, at discounted costs — placing the chip nicely under a greenback every.

From their announcement:

Raspberry Pi Direct is an internet storefront, which at the moment sells precisely two merchandise:

• Reels of 500 RP2040 chips, with a unit value of $0.80

• Reels of three,400 RP2040 chips, with a unit value of $0.70

Merely create an account, add merchandise to your basket, and take a look at as you’ll do in any on-line retailer. We’ll contact you to rearrange fee by financial institution switch (Raspberry Pi Direct doesn’t assist credit score or debit card funds), and ship your merchandise as soon as funds clear.

The variety of boards using the RP2040 chip is spectacular — over 60 and counting as of final fall. From the foremost board makers like Adafruit, Arduino, and Sparkfun to impartial hobbyists, the number of creations powered by this new chip, in such a brief period of time, has been very spectacular. You’ll be able to study extra in regards to the RP2040’s inception in our latest interview with Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton.