Exactly. And people have been also using them for this exact purpose.
https://hackaday.com/2015/02/19/turn-your-beagleboneblack-in...
But hey, put 'Raspberry' or 'Arduino' label on it and suddenly it's so new and innovative it makes me sick.
But hey, put 'Raspberry' or 'Arduino' label on it and suddenly it's so new and innovative it makes me sick.
I get why you feel that way. I think that's the nature of the huge internet and younger folk learning every day. I totally get pissy every time I see someone repost a "discovery" that is 20~30 years old and I've seen many times, just to farm clicks, karma, or whatever internet points their platform rewards. But I think that's just life now: everything is "look at me!" tiktok-ified, even engineering.
But the dude really is pushing the limits of the PICO here, always nice to see someone doing something other than blinking LEDs and jizzing about it on reddit, right?
The logic analyzer itself, even the usage of cheap Pico in it is very cool.
Superficially the PRU and the PIO do indeed look similar. Look more closely and you'll see the PRU is both more complex and more capable than the PIO. It's a small CPU core in its own right with predictable timing. PIO is significantly simpler, almost more of a programmable state machine than a proper CPU. So yes less capable but also integrated into a cheap micro-controller rather than a Linux booting SoC with all the complexity and cost that brings.
That really is why the PIO is interesting, it's the significant capabilities they bring combined with the low price point and simple chip.
Documentation: Pages 198-521 out of this 5118 page PDF: