Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) Overview

The Raspberry Pi Pico from is a powerful SOC (System On a Chip) which delivers a 130Mhz Dual Core ARM Cortex M0+ Processor, supporting 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 2x UART, 3x 12-bit ADC and 16x controllable PWM channels and more, all in an Arduino compatible chip.

There are a wide variety of modules and boards which are now available with an RP2040 on board, allowing you to select the most suitable base hardware for your project, to get you moving as quickly as possible.

There is also the brand new Raspberry Pi Pico W which comes with a Infineon CYW43439 WiFi chip on board, however support for the WiFi capabilities are not available for the Arduino ecosystem at present.

Getting Started

The first step to get started is to install Visual Studio, Visual Micro, and the Arduino IDE.

To install the board package for the Raspberry Pi Pico, there are currently two major board packages available:

The Arduino MBED OS Board Package can be found in the Micro Explorer > Board Manager, just search for "Pico" and install the package.
Alternatively there is the RPS0240 Package from Earle F. Philhower, III which supports a vast array of RP2040 compatible boards, built on the Pico SDK!

To add this board package, the below JSON URL needs to be added in the vMicro IDE Locations screen:
```
https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico/releases/download/global/package_rp2040_index.json
```
Once added you can then use the Board Manager in Visual Micro to install the Raspberry Pi Pico/RP2040 board package.

From here it is the same as any other Arduino project, with a variety of Examples and Libraries available for this platform specifically.

A useful overview of the RP2040 Libraries can be found here.

Uploading Software

Once you have written your first sketch, you will need to build and upload it to the RP2040.

Using On-Board USB

Simply connect this to your PC, and it should appear in the Ports List in Visual Micro:-

Port Selection for ESP32 Board in Visual Micro

Simply select the port, and press Build & Upload to upload the new software to your board.

If no port is available initially, simply run the Build & Upload button, and the code will still be uploaded via the UF2 Filesystem uploader.

Debugging

Using the Serial Debugger

The Visual Micro Serial Debugger can be used to debug your code easily, without an external programmer, via the Serial Interface setup for the upload above.

Our Serial Debugger adds @Plot Charting features, data tracking, and allows breakpoints to be hit conditionally, saving you time stepping through your code to the right scenario.

Using a Hardware Debugger

If you need to debug core code, or change breakpoints on the fly, the Hardware Debugging solutions may be the best approach.

A variety of debug probes can be used for the RP2040, including being able to create your own probe from another RP2040 board!

Debugging Documentation can be found on this page, with a YouTube instructional video coming soon!

PicoProbe Programmer and Debugger Connections