At the beginning of 2021, Raspberry PI announced the new RP2040 microcontroller and the Raspberry Pi Pico module. This microcontroller is interesting for its characteristics in particular, the presence of two Arm Cortex-M0 + cores with a clock frequency of 133 MHz. In the wake of rapidly growing interest around the world in new Raspberry products, Wiznet introduced several new modules: W5100S-EVB-Pico, W5500-EVB-Pico, W6100-EVB-Pico. The modules are a fully functional analogue of the Raspberry Pi Pico with an Ethernet bridge (W5100S, W5500, W6100) and an RJ-45 network connector installed on the board. A good review of the two W5100S-EVB-Pico and W5500-EVB-Pico boards is on the Gough lui website (https://goughlui.com).

But Wiznet didn't stop there and recently released a new development board W55RP20-EVB-Pico, which combines Raspberry Pi RP2040 and W5500 Ethernet controller into one compact solution. This board also includes 2MB of flash memory for storing firmware and is compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico accessories, making it an interesting solution for developing projects using Ethernet. In this review, I will briefly introduce the latest version of the W55RP20-EVB-Pico development board.

What is W55RP20?

This is a chip that combines the W5500 Ethernet controller from WIZnet with the RP2040 microcontroller from Raspberry Pi and 2MB of flash memory.

The Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller is known to most and needs no introduction, but what is the W5500?

The W5500 is an embedded Ethernet controller with hardwired TCP/IP that simplifies connecting embedded systems to the Internet. The W5500 allows to integrate Internet access into your applications, which includes a TCP/IP stack, 10/100 Ethernet MAC and PHY on a single chip, TCP, UDP, IPv4, ICMP, ARP, IGMP and PPPoE are supported by the hardwired TCP/IP stack. The W5500's data transfer memory is an internal 32 KB buffer.

And all this was combined into one compact chip. Photo for comparison of the sizes of the original RP2040 with the W55RP20.

Evaluation board

The W55RP20-EVB-Pico board has the same pinout as the Raspberry Pi Pico board. However, GPIO17, GPIO20, GPIO21, GPIO22, GPIO23, GPIO24, and GPIO25 are not accessible due to the connections inside the board.

Externally, the board looks like a longer Raspberry Pico board with an Ethernet port installed.

I also have the W5100S-EVB-Pico version of the board, so we can compare how they differ from the W55RP20-EVB-Pico version.

The new board has become a little longer than the previous version, the USB connector has changed, now it is USB Type-C, and an additional RUN button has been added, which is used for resetting, this is very convenient because there is no need to constantly reconnect the power supply.

The board's power supply has also been improved, with the LM8805 LDO linear regulator replaced by the SGM62112 fully-integrated synchronous Buck-Boost converter which is capable of operating from 1.8V to 5.5V input and suitable for battery powered applications such as 1-cell Li-Ion battery, 2-cell or 3-cell Alkaline/NiMH batteries. The device supports up to 1200mA output current at higher than 3.8V input voltage, and 800mA output current at higher than 2.5V input voltage.

Additional diodes USER, ACT, DUP, SPD, LINK are installed. Which will allow monitoring various Ethernet states.

There are holes for installing a PoE module. Power over Ethernet (PoE) designed to supply power to external applications via an Ethernet cable.

From the design features of the board for W55RP20, the microcircuit became one, but it is still necessary to use two quartz generators.

Development environment

Wiznet provides a good set of libraries in three languages ​​C++, MicroPython, CircuitPython.

By the way, I already wrote a blog about how you can conveniently write code in MicroPython using a very convenient IDE PyCharm for Raspberry Pi PIco (Getting Started with the MicroPython in PyCharm for Raspberry Pi Pico).

There are also good code examples that will help you start developing.

The developer community is constantly expanding and expanding the resource with various interesting projects.

Conclusion

I would like to note that the W55RP20 chip can be used in a wide variety of end applications. These can be network devices for home and office, embedded servers, security systems, video surveillance and access control, IP telephony and video communication, remote access to information and data collection, remote control and monitoring, automation of buildings and industrial premises, etc. It seems that Etherent and TCP / IP are still the most common way to connect a variety of devices. Although WiFi has recently been gradually replacing wired "copper" Ethernet, nevertheless, finding a port and "plugging into a local network" is still the easiest way to connect to the same Wi-Fi is not quite suitable for highly reliable applications. Such accessibility of Ethernet has not bypassed the smallest hardware: controllers, sensors, consumption meters, etc., which are now called the fashionable marketing word "Internet of Things" (IoT).

Links to resources

Documents

GitHub Examples

Makers Community