What Raspberry Pi Pico development board do you recommend

opiniated: shabaz PICO-EUROCARD Development Board.

Yes, development boards can be very useful. I like them because you can reuse and I find they are better for handling wired connections if moving your project about.

If looking to buy, I would say a good place to start is the Pimoroni online portal - I assume you can buy directly from the US. Otherwise I'm sure mainstream distributors might stock too.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/automation-2040-w-mini?variant=40336518086739

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inventor-2040-w?variant=40053063155795

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-breakout-garden-base?variant=32369509892179

I also found some stuff on the Waveshare website:

https://www.waveshare.com/product/raspberry-pi/boards-kits/raspberry-pi-pico-cat/pico-to-hat.htm

https://www.waveshare.com/Pico-Relay-B.htm

Good luck finding a good development board. Picos are really flexible, I especially like how easy it is to do pwm and apply pwm to servo control. Try it, you'll like it.

Pico fits right on a breadboard, so any peripherals and circuits you have can probably be connected that way. Once you have tried a few things on a breadboard, there are a lot of more specific development options. I recommend this option as it is low cost and can keep you busy as long as you want with endless possibilities.

If you have Grove modules, you can get a Pico card with Grove connectors. 

If you have Click modules, you can get a Pico card with Click connectors.

You can get an adapter shield that converts Pico to a Feather platform.

I'd say that the Pico is a development board. It might be worth getting some expansion boards that take your fancy, but none of these are essential for getting to grips with it. It just depends on what interests you and what the retailers in your country have.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-rgb-keypad-base?variant=32369517166675
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pico-display-pack?variant=32368664215635

It might be worth getting 2 Picos - especially if you're paying for shipping anyway - as one Pico can be used as a debugger for another Pico.

For Ethernet based projects, I've been quite happy with the Wiznet EVB PICO series - https://goughlui.com/2022/10/23/quick-review-wiznet-w5100s-evb-pico-w5500-evb-pico-development-boards/

For Wi-Fi, I'd probably stick with the Pico W.

For just microcontroller, the Pico is a good choice, but you might want something smaller.

Regardless, the Maker Pi Pico base-board is helpful if you want something a little maker friendly - and it's cheap too www.cytron.io/amp-p-maker-pi-pico .

- Gough

I'm glad you pointed out that blog post!
I was neck deep in renovations and missed it back then!

And I'd be biased towards choosing this one too

Hi Sean,

I'm biased too, but if you want the DIY option, then in https://github.com/shabaz123/pico-eurocard there is a zip file there called exportpico_euro_v_2_0.zip.

If that file is sent to a PCB factory, then the board that arrives can be used as-is (apart from buying the Pico), since the Pico is very complete.

In other words, by just soldering on the Pi Pico (either directly or with header pins), then the board can be used to patch wires to external breadboard, or to the perfboard area already on the PCB.

Then, whenever you feel like it, additional parts can be soldered on depending on needs. For instance, a couple of buttons and LEDs, or a 3.3V or 5V regulator, if you want to power other things too.

This is the completely populated board (but as mentioned, you could start with just the Pico soldered on). The board has space for two Picos (thanks to an idea from Jan Cumps  ). The second Pico is a smaller XIAO RP2040 (it is just used as a debugger when C/C++ coding using the Pico SDK. If you're using Arduino or Python, then it's not required.

Is your board something Newark / element14 will be (is already?) stocking? Is that a possibility, cstanton  ?

I wish/hope they can but I don't know who to ask. Since not everyone will want 5-10 boards from a PCB manufacturer and the associated shipping costs from China, it would be useful for people to buy just one or two.

I quite like the large size, since it has the built-in debugger and power supplies. Kind of all-in-one for projects. 

The one that Gough Lui links is interesting too, I just noticed they have LEDs on all ports which is pretty neat. I was just thinking, there is a cheaper way to do that using a different method on the Pico-Euro board. On the right side of the Pico-Euro board, the outputs are ordered on consecutive pins, since this is useful for PIO projects (PIO benefits from ordered pins). It is easy to connect a logic analyzer on banks of pins, but there could also be a plug-on custom PCB with LEDs on it (e.g. 8 LEDs), that can be removed and connected to different banks of 8 pins when desired. Far lower cost to do that than having dozens of MOSFETs and LEDs soldered.