Pico comparisons…
NOTE PicoCalc main board has 8Mb psram (though slower than Pico ram). Program language speed all relate to MMBasic on basic Pico. Overclock speed sourced from succesful tests by others but may fail in PicoCalc due to onboard psram and other issues. Will update as time goes on if enough interest.
Yeah, MMBasic probbably won’t work on them without someone from the community to do the porting work. MicroPython has been shown to work on the WalnutPi. And all the usual build tools for C, CPP, Python, Perl, PHP, and whatever else you may want will probably work on the Lyra since it’s running full blown Linux. Someone already has Pico-8 running on it, a Doom port, etc.
If you want MMBasic/PicoMite, best to stick with just the Pico or Pico 2, or a Pico upgrade like the Pimoroni (as I imagine someone will get PicoMite working on it too). That will also be compatible with the usual Pico development tools and information online. But if you want flexibility and a sort of “mini uConsole” (obviously with much less power), then the Lyra would be the way to go. A recent post indicated the MilkV Duo may also work as a Linux solution, and it seems comparable to the Lyra (and also has support for adding a camera, which would be interesting to see someone to try to integrate into the PicoCalc case!) For these sorts of things, the PicoCalc ceases to be just a “calculator” and is more like a case for a SBC Linux device with a nice built in keyboard and screen.
Not yet - the supplied .uf2 images are compiled for Pico / Pico W right now.
That said, some Pico 2 images are starting to appear - check other threads.
I’m not even sure the forum is a good place for all the info about different hardware and firmware options. Might be better to have a website, a wiki with a table, or maybe even just a (Google?) spreadsheet that could just list out the hardware and the firmware and then provide links to forum topics/github/etc. for each firmware.
The information is complex enough that it kinda goes beyond a simple list. But there’s really only two main dimensions: hardware module and firmware/OS. I’m not even sure what’s the right thing to call the firmware. It ends up being mainly the application software (PicoMite, MicroPython, etc.) and the OS wrapped into one. An exception is something like the Lyra which runs a more fully featured OS (Ubuntu) and can run multiple applications. But with some kind of table view, people could either focus on the hardware module they have to see what they could run on it, or they could focus on the thing they want to use (MicroPython, uLisp, PicoMite, etc.) and find out what hardware modules they could use. Even better is if some crowdsourcing could be done and some performance metrics could be added so it would be possible to compare the performance of the same code in MicroPython running on the Pico, to the Pico2, to the Waveshare, etc.That was done already for uLisp, but it would be nice to do it for the other options across platforms.
Good idea !, yet VERY early days. I will update this list as time goes on. Hopefully providing links to latest versions of known working operating systems as a go to for beginners and super nerds alike…
It’d be good to also include what works and doesn’t per board. For example, the Luckfox Lyra doesn’t natively support sound and the MilkV probably won’t either due to pin limitations.
Hmmmm Teensy 4.0 and 4.1… 600Mhz (overclockable too) with built in RTC !
UPDATE…
First look at pinouts and its clear very few if any pubs align with Pico pins hence it will need at least an adapter board underneath to juggle them around and also give the standard 40 pin footprint.
No different to a basic Pico. Just ensure the right way round, THE LCD HASNT POPPED OUT OF ITS GROOVE and NO UNDUE DOWNWARD PRESSURE ON PCB as the screen is beneath it !. Some have found gently wiggling the core module back to front is better than simply pressing down in one go…
