Arduino-Pico

Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core, for all RP2040 and RP2350 boards

This is a port of Arduino to the RP2040 (Raspberry Pi Pico processor) and RP2350 (Raspberry Pi Pico 2 processor). It uses the bare Raspberry Pi Pico SDK and a custom GCC 14.3/Newlib 4.5 toolchain and supports ARM and RISC-V cores.

Documentation

See https://arduino-pico.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ along with the examples for more detailed usage information.

Contributing

Read the Contributing Guide for more information on submitting pull requests and porting libraries or sketches to this core.

Supported Boards

Raspberry Pi Pico
Raspberry Pi Pico W
Raspberry Pi Pico 2
Raspberry Pi Pico 2W
0xCB Helios
Adafruit Feather RP2040
Adafruit Feather RP2040 SCORPIO
Adafruit Floppsy RP2040
Adafruit ItsyBitsy RP2040
Adafruit KB2040
Adafruit Macropad RP2040
Adafruit Metro RP2040
Adafruit Metro RP2350
Adafruit QTPy RP2040
Adafruit STEMMA Friend RP2040
Adafruit Trinkey RP2040 QT
Amken Bunny
Amken Revelop
Amken Revelop Plus
Amken Revelop eS
Architeuthis Flux Jumperless
Architeuthis Flux Jumperless V5
Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect
ArtronShop RP2 Nano
BIGTREETECH SKR-Pico
Breadstick Raspberry
BridgeTek IDM2040-7A
BridgeTek IDM2040-43A
Cytron IRIV IO Controller
Cytron Maker Pi RP2040
Cytron Maker Nano RP2040
Cytron Maker Uno RP2040
Cytron Motion 2350 Pro
Datanoise PicoADK v1
Datanoise PicoADK v2 (RP2350)
Degz Suibo RP2040
DeRuiLab FlyBoard2040 Core
DFRobot Beetle RP2040
ElectronicCats Hunter Cat NFC
EVN Alpha
ExtremeElectronics RC2040
GeeekPi RP2040 Plus
GroundStudio Marble Pico
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 WiFi
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 WiFi/BLE
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 WiFi6/BLE
Invector Labs Challenger NB RP2040 WiFi
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 LTE
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 LoRa
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 SubGHz
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 SD/RTC
Invector Labs Challenger RP2040 UWB
Invector Labs Challenger+ RP2350 BConnect
Invector Labs Challenger+ RP2350 WiFi/BLE
Invector Labs Challenger+ RP2350 NB-IoT
Invector Labs RPICO32
Melopero Cookie RP2040
Melopero Shake RP2040
METE HOCA Akana R1
Makerbase MKSTHR36
Makerbase MKSTHR42
MyMakers RP2040
Neko Systems BL2040 Mini
Newsan Archi
nullbits Bit-C PRO
Olimex Pico2XL
Olimex Pico2XXL
Olimex RP2040-Pico30
PicoLume Transceiver
Pimoroni PGA2040
Pimoroni Pico Plus 2
Pimoroni Pico Plus 2W
Pimoroni Plasma2040
Pimoroni Plasma2350
Pimoroni Plasma2350W
Pimoroni Servo2040
Pimoroni Tiny2040
Pimoroni Tiny2350
Pintronix PinMax
RAKwireless RAK11300
Redscorp RP2040-Eins
Redscorp RP2040-ProMini
Sea-Picro
Seeed Indicator RP2040
Seeed XIAO RP2040
Seeed XIAO RP2040 Plus
Seeed XIAO RP2350
Silicognition RP2040-Shim
Solder Party RP2040 Stamp
Solder Party RP2350 Stamp
Solder Party RP2350 Stamp XL
Soldered Electronics NULA RP2350
SparkFun IoT RedBoard RP2350
SparkFun MicroMod RP2040
SparkFun ProMicro RP2040
SparkFun ProMicro RP2350
SparkFun Thing Plus RP2040
SparkFun Thing Plus RP2350
SparkFun XRP Controller
uPesy RP2040 DevKit
VCC-GND YD-RP2040
Viyalab Mizu RP2040
Waveshare RP2040 Zero
Waveshare RP2040 One
Waveshare RP2040 Plus
Waveshare RP2040 LCD 0.96
Waveshare RP2040 LCD 1.28
Waveshare RP2040 LoRa
Waveshare RP2040 Matrix
Waveshare RP2040 PiZero
Waveshare RP2350 Zero
Waveshare RP2350 PiZero
Waveshare RP2350 Plus
Waveshare RP2350 Plus W
Waveshare RP2350 LCD 0.96
WIZnet W5100S-EVB-Pico
WIZnet W5100S-EVB-Pico2
WIZnet W5500-EVB-Pico
WIZnet W5500-EVB-Pico2
WIZnet W55RP20-EVB-Pico
WIZnet W6300-EVB-Pico
WIZnet W6300-EVB-Pico2
WIZnet WizFi360-EVB-Pico
Generic RP2040 (configurable flash, I/O pins)
Generic RP2350 (configurable flash, I/O pins)

Features

Adafruit TinyUSB Arduino (USB mouse, keyboard, flash drive, generic HID, CDC Serial, MIDI, WebUSB, others)
Bluetooth on the PicoW (Classic and BLE) with Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, and Virtual Serial
Bluetooth Classic and BLE HID master mode (connect to BT keyboard, mouse, or joystick)
Generic Arduino USB Serial, Keyboard, Joystick, and Mouse emulation
WiFi (Pico W, ESP32-based ESPHost, Atmel WINC1500)
Ethernet (Wired WizNet W6300, WizNet W6100, WizNet W5500, WizNet W5100, ENC28J60)
HTTP client and server (WebServer)
SSL/TLS/HTTPS
Over-the-Air (OTA) upgrades
Filesystems (LittleFS and SD/SDFS)
Multicore support (setup1() and loop1())
FreeRTOS SMP support
Overclocking and underclocking from the menus
digitalWrite/Read, shiftIn/Out, tone, analogWrite(PWM)/Read, temperature
Analog stereo audio in using DMA and the built-in ADC
Analog stereo audio out using PWM hardware
Bluetooth A2DP audio source (output) and sink (input) on the PicoW
USB drive mode for data loggers (SingleFileDrive, FatFSUSB)
Peripherals: SPI master/slave, Wire(I2C) master/slave, dual UART, emulated EEPROM, I2S audio input/output, Servo
printf (i.e. debug) output over USB serial
Transparent use of PSRAM globals and heap (RP2350 only)
ARM or RISC-V (Hazard3) support for the RP2350
Semihosted serial and file system access
GPROF profiling support

The RP2040 PIO state machines (SMs) are used to generate jitter-free:

Servos
Tones
I2S Input
I2S Output
Software UARTs (Serial ports)
Software SPIs

Installing via Arduino Boards Manager

Windows-specific Notes

Please do not use the Windows Store version of the actual Arduino application because it has issues detecting attached Pico boards. Use the “Windows ZIP” or plain “Windows” executable (EXE) download direct from https://arduino.cc. and allow it to install any device drivers it suggests. Otherwise the Pico board may not be detected. Also, if trying out the 2.0 beta Arduino please install the release 1.8 version beforehand to ensure needed device drivers are present. (See #20 for more details.)

Linux-specific Notes

Installing Arduino using flatpak (often used by “App Stores” in various Linux distributions) will mean it has restricted access to the host. This might cause uploads to fail with error messages such as the following:

Scanning for RP2040 devices
...
No drive to deploy.

If you encounter this, you will need to either install Arduino in a different manner, or override the flatpak sandboxing feature using the following command, then restarting Arduino.

flatpak override --user --filesystem=host:ro cc.arduino.IDE2

Installation

Open up the Arduino IDE and go to File->Preferences.

In the dialog that pops up, enter the following URL in the “Additional Boards Manager URLs” field:

https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico/releases/download/global/package_rp2040_index.json

Hit OK to close the dialog.

Go to Tools->Boards->Board Manager in the IDE

Type “pico” in the search box and select “Add”:

Installing via GIT

Windows Users: Before installing via git on Windows, please read and follow the directions in this link. If Win32 long paths are not enabled, and git not configured to use them then there may be errors when attempting to clone the submodules.

To install via GIT (for latest and greatest versions) under Linux or Mac:

mkdir -p ~/Arduino/hardware/pico
git clone https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico.git ~/Arduino/hardware/pico/rp2040
cd ~/Arduino/hardware/pico/rp2040
git submodule update --init --recursive
cd tools
python3 ./get.py

For Windows, you need have Python already installed and git clone in a different path:

mkdir %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Arduino\hardware\pico
git clone https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico.git %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Arduino\hardware\pico\rp2040
cd %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Arduino\hardware\pico\rp2040
git submodule update --init --recursive
cd tools
python .\get.py

Uploading Sketches

To upload your first sketch, you will need to hold the BOOTSEL button down while plugging in the Pico to your computer. Then hit the upload button and the sketch should be transferred and start to run.

After the first upload, this should not be necessary as the arduino-pico core has auto-reset support. Select the appropriate serial port shown in the Arduino Tools->Port->Serial Port menu once (this setting will stick and does not need to be touched for multiple uploads). This selection allows the auto-reset tool to identify the proper device to reset. Them hit the upload button and your sketch should upload and run.

In some cases the Pico will encounter a hard hang and its USB port will not respond to the auto-reset request. Should this happen, just follow the initial procedure of holding the BOOTSEL button down while plugging in the Pico to enter the ROM bootloader.

Uploading Filesystem Images

The onboard flash filesystem for the Pico, LittleFS, lets you upload a filesystem image from the sketch directory for your sketch to use. Download the needed plugin from

https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico-littlefs-plugin/releases

To install, follow the directions in

https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico-littlefs-plugin/blob/master/README.md

For detailed usage information, please check the ESP8266 repo documentation (ignore SPIFFS related notes) available at

https://arduino-pico.readthedocs.io/en/latest/fs.html

Uploading Sketches with Picoprobe/Debugprobe

If you have built a Raspberry Pi Picoprobe, you can use OpenOCD to handle your sketch uploads and for debugging with GDB.

Under Windows a local admin user should be able to access the Picoprobe port automatically, but under Linux udev must be told about the device and to allow normal users access.

To set up user-level access to Picoprobes on Ubuntu (and other OSes which use udev):

echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2e8a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0004", MODE="660", GROUP-"plugdev"' | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/98-PicoProbe.rules
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2e8a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="000a", MODE="660", GROUP="plugdev"' | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/98-PicoProbe.rules
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2e8a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="000f", MODE="660", GROUP="plugdev"' | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/98-PicoProbe.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
sudo udevadm trigger -w -s usb

The first line creates a device file in /dev matching the USB vendor and product ID of the Picoprobe, and it enables global read+write permissions. The second line causes udev to load this new rule. The third line requests the kernel generate “device change” events that will cause our new udev rule to run.

If for some reason the device file does not appear, manually unplug and re-plug the USB connection and check again. The output from dmesg can reveal useful diagnostics if the device file remains absent.

Once Picoprobe permissions are set up properly, then select the board “Raspberry Pi Pico (Picoprobe)” in the Tools menu and upload as normal.

Debugging with Picoprobe, OpenOCD, and GDB

The installed tools include a version of OpenOCD (in the pqt-openocd directory) and GDB (in the pqt-gcc directory). These may be used to run GDB in an interactive window as documented in the Pico Getting Started manuals from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Use the command line ./system/openocd/bin/openocd -f ./lib/rp2040/picoprobe_cmsis_dap.tcl or ./system/openocd/bin/openocd -f ./lib/rp2350/picoprobe_cmsis_dap.tcl from the git installation directory.

Licensing and Credits

The Arduino IDE and ArduinoCore-API are developed and maintained by the Arduino team. The IDE is licensed under GPL.
The RP2040 GCC-based toolchain is licensed under under the GPL.
The Pico-SDK is by Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd and licensed under the BSD 3-Clause license.
Arduino-Pico core files are licensed under the LGPL.
LittleFS library written by ARM Limited and released under the BSD 3-clause license.
UF2CONV.PY is by Microsoft Corporation and licensed under the MIT license.
Networking and filesystem code taken from the ESP8266 Arduino Core and licensed under the LGPL.
DHCP server for AP host mode from the Micropython Project, distributed under the MIT License.
FreeRTOS is copyright Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, and distributed under the MIT license.
lwIP is (c) the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and licenced under the BSD license.
BearSSL library written by Thomas Pornin, is distributed under the MIT License.
UZLib is copyright (c) 2003 Joergen Ibsen and distributed under the zlib license.
LEAmDNS is copyright multiple authors and distributed under the MIT license.
http-parser is copyright Joyent, Inc. and other Node contributors.
WebServer code modified from the ESP32 WebServer and is copyright (c) 2015 Ivan Grokhotkov and others.
Xoshiro-cpp is copyright (c) 2020 Ryo Suzuki and distributed under the MIT license.
TLSF memory manager for PSRAM from Espressif fork of original by Matthew Conte is copyright Matthew Conte and licensed under the MIT license.
ESPHost library is LGPL licensed by its maintainers.

-Earle F. Philhower, III
earlephilhower@yahoo.com