Hi There! I am a complete newbie and would love some guidance on what components I need to have to make the raspberry pico bluetooth and wifi capable? Is that possible or do I need a different raspberry device? Thank you in advance for your guidance. Warm Regards Kylie
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Hey Kylie,
Depends what exactly you mean by wifi and bluetooth capable. Are you trying to play music (a2dp), use a headset (hfp), use a bt serial interface for basic data transfer, make a bt HID, or something else?
And what do you need to do with wifi? Is this an IoT application?
What’s your end goal here?
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Thank you for your reply @Oliver33. I want to use the WIFI to communicate between the Pico and an mobile device app. The mobile device app will control the changing of LED colours on the Pico as well as play short MP3 audios as the colours change. The Bluetooth will then communicate the changes made via WIFI back to a central database. (I gosh I hope that is right?! … as I said I am a complete newbie here). Thanks again. Really appreciate your support and guidance.
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Hey Kylie,
I’d suggest taking a look at some Wifi breakouts that you can interact with using your Pico.
Something like the Wireless pack comes to mind. Let us know if you have any questions in getting started with it, you’ll basically just be using C++ and Python libraries to be able to let your Pico chat with a ESP32-WROOM-32E over SPI which should allow you to control the logic in your scripts for those purposes wirelessly (should even be able to host a locally accessible website from your Piico by accessing the memory of the SD card it has onboard if that’s something you’re interested in).
PS. Note that using this will limit your access to the pins on your Pico, if you’ll still need them for your project, I’d suggest picking up and soldering on some extra tall or double-sided headers so that you can stack whatever you need underneath this board to maintain easy access to them. Just be careful you’re not using the same pins as this requires for SPI as that’ll be a headache to deal with 
P.S. I’ve used these double-sided headers with a Pico before and you get about 3-4mm underneath which is usually enough to attach some wiring to, but if you do order them, I’d grab two or three just incase they don’t snap in half nicely (when I’m putting these together I like to use either side-cutters or gently snap them with some needle nosed pliers)
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OMG @Bryce your explanation was perfect!
Thank you so much for your help and your really clear to understand guidance. I’ll be ordering those pieces now and following your steps. Thanks again. Deeply appreciated.
Kylie
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Hey Kylie,
No worries, glad to help! Of course this won’t give you Bluetooth capabilities, and is designed for 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz networks as described in the specs, although for your purposes that should do the trick and often 5GHz routers these days also have a Wireless Access Point in 2.4GHz too except in some special cases.
If you have any other questions please let us know. All the best with the project! I’m keen to see how it goes!
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