Overview
The nXPico Family is neXo’s lineup of controller boards built around the RP2350A microcontroller. The first three share the 40-pin Raspberry Pi Pico footprint and the same core I/O, while nXPlc is a board of its own, dedicated to fieldbus work. Each one is designed for a different use case.
| nXPico | nXPico W | nXPico M | nXPlc | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCU | RP2350A | RP2350A | RP2350A | RP2350A |
| Connectivity | — | WiFi (2.4 GHz) | LTE-M / NB-IoT / GPS (nRF9151 modem) | CAN, Ethernet (W5500), Modbus TCP |
| Firmware | CODESYS Control | CODESYS Control | CODESYS Control | CODESYS Control |
| Programming | IEC 61131-3 (ST, LD, FBD, …) | IEC 61131-3 (ST, LD, FBD, …) | IEC 61131-3 | IEC 61131-3 (ST, LD, FBD, …) |
| USB connector | Micro-USB type B | Micro-USB type B | USB-C | USB-C |
| On-board process I/O | yes | yes | yes | — |
| Serial ports for the application | COM2 + COM3 | COM2 + COM3 | COM3 only | — |
| PWM outputs | yes | yes | yes | — |
| Status | Available now | Available now | Available now | Available now |
Choosing a variant
Section titled “Choosing a variant”- nXPico — the base CODESYS controller. Digital/analog I/O, no wireless connectivity. Perfect for local automation tasks.
- nXPico W — same I/O as nXPico, plus an onboard WiFi module serving the application: TCP/UDP sockets with SysSocket, MQTT/MQTTS and an X.509 device identity. Programming and login go through USB, as on nXPico. See WiFi Configuration.
- nXPico M — neXo’s own hardware design with an integrated nRF9151 cellular modem (LTE-M/NB-IoT/GPS). The only variant with cellular connectivity. The modem is used through AT commands, and the application decides when to go online; an IEC library for the modem is in development.
- nXPlc — the CAN bus board, with Ethernet (W5500, also used for programming) and Modbus TCP, and the only one in the family without on-board process I/O: the application talks to the devices on the serial bus. CAN is used through the standard CODESYS CANbus and CANopen Manager nodes (without a license the CANopen stack runs in demo mode).
Common I/O
Section titled “Common I/O”The three Pico-footprint boards expose the same digital and analog I/O, on the same GPIOs — see nXPico IO Mapping. An application that only uses I/O moves from one board to another unchanged.
They differ in three places:
- the LED: a bit on nXPico, on the WiFi chip on nXPico W, an RGB
DWORDon nXPico M - the
TEMPERATUREchannel: absent on nXPico M - the serial ports: COM2 does not exist on nXPico M, because UART0 is used by the modem.
nXPlc: it has no process terminals, and its channels are the power diagnostics, two indicator LEDs (LED_RUN, LED_ERR) and the die temperature. It has no analog inputs.