Waveshare RP2350 Board Adds Ethernet and PoE for $14

Wired Networking on a Microcontroller, Powered by the Same Cable

Wireless is the default for hobby microcontroller projects, and for good reason. But there is a category of build — building automation, industrial sensing, anything in a rack or a plant room — where Wi-Fi is the wrong answer and a cable is the right one. Waveshare's RP2350-POE-ETH, covered on July 28, 2026, targets exactly that: a Raspberry Pi RP2350 board with a real Ethernet port and optional Power over Ethernet, starting at $13.99.

• Raspberry Pi RP2350A with dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 or RISC-V Hazard3 cores at 150 MHz
• 10/100Mbps Ethernet over RJ45 via the WIZnet W6300 hardwired TCP/IP chip
• Optional 802.3af PoE through a 6-pin connector, so one cable carries data and power
• 63 × 21 mm board, priced $13.99–$18.99 direct and $16.19–$20.33 on AliExpress across four variants

Why a Hardwired Ethernet Chip Matters

The W6300 is not just a PHY — it is a hardwired TCP/IP controller, meaning the network stack runs in silicon rather than on the microcontroller. On a 150 MHz Cortex-M33 with 520KB of RAM, that distinction is significant. Offloading TCP/IP frees both cycles and memory for your actual application, and it makes network behavior far more deterministic than a software stack competing with sensor polling for time.

For a sensor node that needs to publish MQTT messages reliably for years without a reboot, deterministic beats clever. Waveshare provides sample MQTT code on GitHub alongside its wiki documentation, which is the exact starting point most people building this kind of device want.

What Does PoE Change for a Project Like This?

It removes a wall wart. That sounds trivial until you are installing twelve sensors across a building and each one needs a power outlet within reach. With 802.3af PoE, a single Ethernet run carries both the data and the power, and the installation problem collapses from "where is the nearest socket" to "where is the nearest switch port."

The board handles power flexibly: 5V via USB-C or through the optional PoE module, with a 3.3V linear regulator rated up to 800mA for peripherals. That headroom is generous for an MCU board and leaves room for sensors, a display, or a small relay board without adding a second supply.

The Rest of the Hardware

Two 16-pin headers expose up to 20 GPIO, with 2× UART, 2× SPI, 2× I2C, 16 PWM channels, and four 12-bit ADC inputs. There are boot and reset buttons and two WS2812 addressable RGB LEDs for status indication. Storage is 16Mbit of SPI NOR flash.

The RP2350A itself remains the most interesting part of the Raspberry Pi silicon lineup, because it lets you choose your instruction set: dual Arm Cortex-M33 cores or dual RISC-V Hazard3 cores, selectable at boot. Development support covers MicroPython, C/C++ and Arduino, so the on-ramp is short regardless of which toolchain you already use.

At 63 × 21 mm — 65.88 mm with connectors — it stays close to Pico proportions despite carrying an RJ45 jack, which is a genuinely tidy piece of board layout.

How It Compares

Waveshare has been steadily filling in the RP2350 accessory map, including the RP2350B-Plus-W with Wi-Fi and 41 GPIOs we covered in June. The POE-ETH variant is the wired counterpart to that board, and between the two, most connectivity requirements for an RP2350 project are now covered at under $20.

Four variants are available, from the bare board through to PoE with headers pre-soldered: $13.99–$18.99 from the Waveshare store, $16.19–$20.33 on AliExpress, and $21.11–$27.99 on Amazon. For a networked sensor node that needs one cable and nothing else, that is an easy budget line. More boards in our mini computers coverage.

Sources: CNX Software — July 28, 2026; Waveshare Wiki — July 2026.