The ADC example in the README is pretty fun; being able to stream data out to a PC at a high rate over a standard interface is always useful in some niche use case, and I don't think anyone has managed High Speed USB over PIO (yet?) so this is likely to be the fastest way.
I guess it depends on whether you count the PIO as "general purpose IO" or specific chip for data communication. The ability to run custom programs on them sort of pushes it away from general purpose IO and towards something like a network card that has its own firmware and compute. I think in this case it is fair to say it is debatable.
The RP PIO is not a network processor, and doesn't have that kind of optimization. It is a blank slate that is devoid of intended purpose. It can be used to accomplish lots of different and very arbitrary things.
They seem like very different things to me.
STM32s with Ethernet are cheap and available, I don't see the point in gymnastics like this
Even then, pi pico are dirt cheap and have all sorts of features. Reading from i2c or sensors then putting it out over ethernet could be very useful.
Combined with RMII ethernet phys only costing around 30 cents even at single quantities definitely makes it just a fun project, though definitely an impressive one at that.
rasz•3mo ago