Raspberry Pi Pico W

The Raspberry Pi Pico W is the wireless variant of the RP2040 board: an Infineon CYW43439 radio chip on board (Wi-Fi 802.11n 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 5.2) wired to the MCU over SPI, 2 MB of flash, micro-USB B, and the same 40-pin 2.54 mm DIP footprint and pinout as the Pico. This page renders the MCUID data record: the J1/J2 header mapping, what the wireless circuitry changes, and every published field tied to a fixed official source.

Start developing

• Bring-up — the Pico getting-started guide covers BOOTSEL/UF2, cables and the first blink; the W board follows the same flow with board-specific firmware.
• Chip capabilities and limits — the RP2040 chip page separates what the chip provides from what this board wires up.

Common questions this site answers

• Pico W / Pico 2 W vs non-W — how to tell them apart
• Pico W / Pico 2 W: UF2, BOOTSEL and the on-board LED

Also known as: pico w, picow, raspberry pi pico w, rpi pico w

What the wireless circuitry changes

Same 40 header positions, same power pins — but four board-internal GPIOs do different work than on the non-W Pico, and the official documentation states the differences explicitly:

• The on-board LED is NOT on GP25. It sits on the radio chip (WL_GPIO0). The SDK board header for this board defines no `PICO_DEFAULT_LED_PIN` — code written for the Pico's GP25 LED will not light it. Drive it the official way: Pin("LED", Pin.OUT) in MicroPython (connectivity guide RP-008257-DS §3.4) or cyw43_arch_gpio_put(CYW43_WL_GPIO_LED_PIN, on) in C (pico-examples blink).
• GP25 itself is not free. On this board it is the wireless SPI chip select (CYW43_DEFAULT_PIN_WL_CS 25); and because the SPI clock shares GP29 with the VSYS monitor, the ADC can only read VSYS while no SPI transaction is in progress.
• GP23 — radio enable (CYW43_DEFAULT_PIN_WL_REG_ON).
• GP24 — radio data out/in and host-wake, dynamically shared.
• GP29 — radio SPI clock and the VSYS monitor, sharing one pin: the ADC can read VSYS only while no SPI transaction is in progress.
• None of these four reach the J1/J2 headers — same as the non-W board.

SWD in a different place

The 3-pin SWD pads (SWDIO, GND, SWCLK, no power; left to right on the board: SWCLK, GND, SWDIO) sit centrally, just below the microcontroller on wireless boards — not at the bottom edge as on the Pico/Pico 2. On the pre-soldered Pico WH this becomes a keyed JST-style 3-pin connector at the same central position.

Wireless: capability and licence

The CYW43439 provides Wi-Fi 802.11n single-band 2.4 GHz (WPA3, soft-AP up to four clients) and Bluetooth 5.2 (BLE Central/Peripheral + Classic). The support libraries libcyw43 and BTstack are free for non-commercial use upstream, and Raspberry Pi grants a free commercial licence for projects built on wireless Pico boards (or RP2040/RP2350 + CYW43439) — the full licence texts are linked in the sources below.

Flashing: BOOTSEL and UF2 — with the right firmware

Hold BOOTSEL while plugging in USB; the board enumerates as a mass-storage volume named RPI-RP2 (same as the Pico). Two rules that trip people up:

1. Firmware is board-specific. MicroPython and SDK builds name pico_w separately from pico — a pico UF2 will boot on a Pico W but has no radio support and the wrong LED wiring; always fetch the Pico W build.
2. BOOTSEL lives in mask ROM and cannot be overwritten — the board cannot be permanently bricked through software.

Default UART/I2C/SPI pins

The pico_w.h board header (tag 2.3.1) defines the same software defaults as the Pico — UART0 on GP0/GP1, I2C0 on GP4/GP5, SPI0 on GP16-GP19 (see the Pico page table for the physical positions). A pin-function convention, not a hardware restriction.

Pico WH — the pre-soldered variant

The Raspberry Pi Pico WH is this board with header pins pre-soldered. Per the official documentation, Pico W and Pico WH offer identical hardware capabilities — same RP2040, same radio, LED still on the radio chip (WL_GPIO0), same 40-pin layout — with exactly two physical differences:

1. Pre-soldered headers instead of holes you solder yourself (the WH suffix).
2. Debug connector style: the WH uses a small keyed three-pin connector (JST-style) centrally below the microcontroller chip where the plain Pico W has three through-hole pads — same three signals (SWDIO/GND/SWCLK), no power pin.

Everything on this page — the radio wiring, GP25 as the radio's SPI chip-select, firmware targeting (pico_w, never pico) — applies to the Pico WH unchanged. See the official variant table and the debug-connector table (commit 21d772e7).

Related boards

• The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W is the RP2350 generation of this board: same layout and radio, 4 MB flash, BOOTSEL volume RP2350.
• The Raspberry Pi Pico is the non-wireless sibling: LED on GP25, SWD at the bottom edge.