[hunta2097]

I can't get my head around it sometimes. I know most end up doing duties that a PIC-chip could do but the fact you can get a WiFi enabled microcontroller few a few bucks blows my mind.

The IO co-processing on the Pico is so powerful, I hope they expand on this.

[nerdsniper]

It's also not really clear that using some of the more powerful chips for simple things is really a "waste" in any reasonable sense of the word. The packaging of a PIC/CH32 is probably the majority of its cost and environmental "footprint".

An RP2040 is not much more physical material.

An ESP8266/ESP32 is rather bit more material, but still not egregious.

[projektfu]

The big waste is battery power, which for many hobby things is not that important. For comparison, RP2040 quiescent current is like 400μA, FRAM MSP430 is approximately 0.1μA in interruptible sleep.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Right? Especially when I remember paying $20 each for an 8-bit microcontroller with less than 1k EPROM.