Review of the Elecrow Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced Kit

People who follow me, know I’m a big fan of the Elecrow CrowPi, the little suitcase with a Raspberry Pi and a lot of electronic components included. I used it already a lot in my presentations at various conferences to demonstrate #JavaOnRaspberryPi.

Recently, Elecrow sent me a “Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced Kit” for free, to test and evaluate it. It’s a plastic box with 32 modules, a smart car kit, breadboards, wires, and a Pico to get started quickly with electronic experiments.

You can buy the kit directly from Elecrow starting from $37,99 without Pico and minimal starter kit, up to $68,48 with the wireless Pico and full starter kit included. In Europe, you can buy it at Elektor for €59,95.

First Impression

There is a lot in this box!!! Unfortunately, as is typical when you buy electronic components, with a lot of plastic packaging… But as soon as you start unpacking them, all these different sensors and components start screaming to be tested ;-). It’s is a typical mix of components you will find in most electronic starter kits, and this kit has a nice mix of different types of components.

In the tutorial PDF (89 pages), which you have to download, you get a short introduction about the Pico, the pin diagram, and how you have to prepare the Pico for MicroPython development with Thonny. There are 32 lessons in the tutorial:

Setting up all the different wirings and going through all these lessons, guarantees for many hours of programming fun!

Program with Python

As a quick test, I tested the traffic light component included in this kit.

Prepare the Pico

First I prepared the Pico to program it with MicroPython:

Program with Thonny

Next step: downloading an IDE to write the program.

from machine import Pin
import utime

led = Pin(25, Pin.OUT)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    while True:
        led.value(1)
        utime.sleep_ms(100)
        led.value(0)
        utime.sleep_ms(500)

Traffic Light Example

After the previous steps, we can connect any kind of sensor or component and control it from within Thonny. The following code controls the traffic light component connected on the first pins of the Pico. This doesn’t need wires if you put the Pico in a breadboard as you can see on the picture above.

from machine import Pin
from time import sleep

Led_R = Pin(2, Pin.OUT)
Led_Y = Pin(3, Pin.OUT)
Led_G = Pin(4, Pin.OUT)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    Led_R.value(0)
    Led_Y.value(0)
    Led_G.value(0)
    
    while True:
        Led_R.value(1)
        sleep(3)
        Led_R.value(0)
        
        for i in range(5):
            Led_Y.value(1)
            sleep(0.3)
            Led_Y.value(0)
            sleep(0.3)
        
        Led_G.value(1)
        sleep(6)
        Led_G.value(0)

As you can see, with minimal code that is easy to understand, you can create a nice little project. Ideal to attract the interest of anyone who wants to start experimenting with code and electronics.

Conclusion

For a low price (partially thanks to the inexpensive Pico) you get a lot of value! Many sensors and components to follow the lessons in the tutorial, or create whatever idea comes into your mind. The only negative points I see are the plastic box which doesn’t have separations to keep the components organized and can’t find the assembled car kit, plus the amount of plastic bags for all components… But overall, this kit is well worth its money, and it’s something I’ll take to the CoderDojo club with me next time, to challenge some young coders to discover new frontiers!

#Elecrow #Raspberry Pi #Raspberry Pi Pico #Raspberry Pi Pico W #Python #Electronics #CoderDojo