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How to connect RPi Pico to WiFi and send phone notifications

We show how to connect Pico to WiFi while maintaining low power and running it directly on AAA batteries

In this project we show how to connect Raspberry Pi Picoto WiFi by using the Cricket WiFi moduleand send an alert to our phone. We also explain why using Cricketwill make the WiFi connectivity so power efficient that our device can last on single batteries for months or even years.

This project can be realised by everyone who has some basic IT skills. We demonstrate step by step what needs to be done to put together a complete device.

To keep it easy we write a simple Python program which flashes LED light every 5 minutes on the Picoboard. When the LED flashes it also instructs Cricketto send a notification to our phone.

We chose Blynkto send notifications as it is a very user friendly and reliable multi-platform mobile app. However, it can be any other internet service or local network system of your preference. Cricketallows us to integrate our device to almost any software via either MQTT or HTTP(S) protocols without any programming. Please checkout Cricket’s documentation or other projects to learn more. The possibilities are endless!

We aim with this project to provide a reference for anyone wanting to build various IoT devices with all types of sensors including cameras and even more advanced peripherals. Instead of flashing LED we might want to do more advanced local compute processing and logic e.g. machine learning inference on images or audio.

By doing this we can build sophisticated devices and systems such as a security alarm system for our home, as one of the examples.

Also moving forward you might want to consider other microcontrollers than Pico, if you are looking for more specialised and more power efficiency. However Pico Is great for rapid prototyping and getting things done almost instantaneously.

Let’s get started!”

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