I’ve been moving hydroponic automation code and hardware from an arduino uno over to a Pico W running circuit Python, and it has been such an empowering experience. I’ve got the Pico on a block terminal breakout so I can prototype faster, make future modifications, and rewriting everything in Python has been mostly painless. The wifi radio library had some hiccups, but it was fixed fairly quickly and I had work arounds.
One thing I’m not clear on is why the arduino nano connect costs so much more than the Pico W. I’m not really deep into embedded stuff yet — I mostly dabble and if stuff works, I’m ecstatic. I got my Pico W for around $12 CAD though, and the nano at the moment is around $30 CAD. Is it just that arduino community and support is so strong?
I actually loved building on the Uno first and wanted to rebuild using the arduino MKR 1010, but the Pico has seemed much more flexible, slightly smaller, and much cheaper to replace if anything goes wrong. Am I missing out on something?
I wanted to jump in and get things done previously (and I’m glad I did that at least), but I suspect digging deeper into this will actually be a huge benefit to future projects. There’s a lot to know!
