RASPBERRY PI PICO 2 W

The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W is a microcontroller board designed for embedded integration, built around the RP2350 chip developed by Raspberry Pi in the United Kingdom. It combines two ARM Cortex-M33 cores clocked at 150 MHz, 520kB of SRAM, and 4MB of flash memory to provide deterministic I/O processing in a compact, energy-efficient form factor. In addition to this hardware base, it features integrated Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing embedded projects to be extended to include monitoring, updating, or data exchange functions without the need for external modules.

Beyond improved performance, the RP2350 introduces a dual-core, dual-environment architecture, allowing the choice between a pair of ARM Cortex-M33 cores or a pair of open-hardware cores, enabling the microcontroller's behavior to be precisely adapted to project constraints. Programmable in C/C++ and MicroPython, the Pico 2 W facilitates iterative development while maintaining direct access to digital interfaces: an asset for controlling sensors, actuators, or specialized buses, while maintaining controlled latency.

This specialization extends to security: the integration of TrustZone for Cortex-M, signed boot, 8kB of anti-tamper OTP for key storage, as well as SHA-256 hardware acceleration and a hardware random number generator, provide a reliable foundation for connected applications.

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W: The perfect candidate for a DIY DSP

This onboard orientation naturally extends to specialized audio applications. The Pico 2 W can be used as the hardware basis for a DIY DSP project such as DSPi, firmware that transforms the card into a USB audio interface with a real-time digital processing engine. In this configuration, the microcontroller provides multi-band parametric equalization, active filtering for multi-channel systems, speaker time alignment, and subwoofer management via PDM output, while distributing the computational load across both cores to maintain low latency.

Beyond simple processing, this approach leverages multiple S/PDIF outputs and flexible GPIO assignment to directly drive external DACs or design a complete active architecture, while the Pico 2 W's Wi-Fi connectivity paves the way for remote monitoring or control. The result is a compact platform capable of serving as a dedicated audio processor in a DIY system, without the need for a permanently running computer.