New Pico W

One annoyance with the implementation is that the antenna will be buried in the middle of any enclosure that the Pico W is used in, because the micro USB connector will be on the side of the enclosure most likely, for access to it. That's assuming it's radiation pattern is say doughnut in the plane perpendicular to the Pico's plane along it's longest dimension.

I guess there was nothing they could do since the shape of the Pico and the USB connector were fixed. It's hard retrofitting an antenna into the design when it wasn't originally designed for it I guess. Had they planned for it, they could have at least suggested in the user documentation of the original Pico, for people not to place a ground plane beneath the Pico at that end. Typical seat of the pants planning : (

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Another nicer implementation would have been to extend the Pico by an inch, and had the WLAN bits on there, and made it snap-off-able, so you could position it in the best place for your design. 

No-one in a lot of orgs seem to care about good quality wireless in their designs, if they did, then this options would have perhaps been a better choice. You could then even rotate the radiation pattern if required for your project, by (say) soldering on the snapped-off piece vertically using right-angle pin headers, instead of soldering flat on the board. It would become the Pico W user's choice. 

shabaz said:

No-one in a lot of orgs seem to care about good quality wireless in their designs, if they did, then this options would have perhaps been a better choice. You could then even rotate the radiation pattern if required for your project, by (say) soldering on the snapped-off piece vertically using right-angle pin headers, instead of soldering flat on the board. It would become the Pico W user's choice. 

I see it as the difference between a dev' board for 'testing' functionality of the chip, versus a board ready for embedded production.

Since you can buy the rp2040 as a standalone chip, perhaps the decision was made to cut costs and options rather than give flexibility because someone can always make their own board? (which different companies have done) - though it could simply be that they (Pi Foundation) didn't think about it or that it wasn't requested.

Though you'd think it'd be considered since the Pi Zero had the ability to solder a u.fl socket onto the board.

I think all evidence points to org culture issues with them, they ship "good enough" products but no better. There are so many things they could have done at zero cost, to improve the user experience, but they don't. For instance the upside-down numbering on the Pico, makes no sense. The inability for them place a decent legend on the Raspberry Pi to help people identify pins on the 40-way pin header. Failure to test USB-C power with Apple chargers when they released the Pi 4. The RP2040 chip has an unfriendly 0.4mm pitch (it's a lot harder to use than 0.5 mm pitch, despite the difference being just 0.1 mm). And lack of an option with U.FL as you say.

I think all evidence points to org culture issues with them, they ship "good enough" products but no better. There are so many things they could have done at zero cost, to improve the user experience, but they don't. For instance the upside-down numbering on the Pico, makes no sense. The inability for them place a decent legend on the Raspberry Pi to help people identify pins on the 40-way pin header. Failure to test USB-C power with Apple chargers when they released the Pi 4. The RP2040 chip has an unfriendly 0.4mm pitch (it's a lot harder to use than 0.5 mm pitch, despite the difference being just 0.1 mm). And lack of an option with U.FL as you say.

shabaz said:

I think all evidence points to org culture issues with them

That may be a bit unfair - though I understand having high expectancies of quality standards. From the interviews and how the designers talk about the products, they're simply operating within their means and maybe learning as they go along for the most part.

shabaz said:

Failure to test USB-C power with Apple chargers when they released the Pi 4.

They did drop the ball on following the reference design, they quietly fixed that on subsequent Pi 4 releases but didn't announce the revision. I disagree with the practice of not admitting fault and not admitting design differences and improvements. Especially where it matters.

You could be right, although on the flip side, some (me) would argue they have plenty of resources nowadays for top-quality designs with significant testing if they wish. Hard to know.

Totally agree with what you mention about the design faults etc. They especially rubbed everyone off the wrong way when they banned the first person to identify a hardware bug on Pi #1 from their forum, and ever since have been opaque.