How do you kick off with Raspberry Pi Pico?
- Getting into Raspberry Pi Pico is pretty straightforward! First up, all you really need is the Raspberry Pi Pico itself; that’s the star of the show here.
- Next, you’ll want to hook it up to your PC to load the essential firmware that gets everything running.
- One cool thing we’ll be working with is an LED connected to GPIO25, which we’ll use for some basic control.
- Finally, the main goal here is to show you how to make that LED blink on and off using the Pico.
- Easy peasy!.
How to Update Raspberry Pi Pico Firmware?
- So, first things first, head over to the official site and find the link where you can check out the latest firmware version for your Pico.
- Make sure to grab version 7.25 – oh, and just a heads up, there’s also a beta version if you’re feeling adventurous! Once you’ve downloaded it, plug your Pico into your PC.
- It should pop up on your screen, and that’s when you can go ahead and copy the UF2 file of version 7.25 right onto it.
- After you’ve installed the firmware, your system will reconnect, and boom, you’ll have access to see files like the boot text and the library folder..
How to Control LED on Raspberry Pi Pico?
- If you’re diving into the world of Raspberry Pi Pico, the first thing you need to do is open up the code in Visual Studio Code.
- Now, you’ll probably see a typical “Hello World” message, but we’re going to kick that to the curb! Instead, we’re focusing on controlling GPIO25, where your LED is plugged in.
- You’ll find that controlling this is quite similar to what you did with the NRF52842, since most of the commands are the same.
- The key here is tweaking the GPIO array configuration to get those pins working for you.
- Once you make these adjustments, you can make that LED connected to GPIO25 blink, proving that you’ve successfully executed the changes you intended.
- And if you want to dive deeper into what’s happening, you can fire up CircuitPython and check out the serial monitor through the Python terminal to get a better understanding of those modifications happening on the board..
How do GPIO pins compare on Pico and NRF52840?
- Let’s talk about GPIO pins! So, on the Raspberry Pi Pico, you’ll notice that the GPIO pins are labeled a bit differently compared to the NRF52840; you’ll see labels like A0 to A3, GP0, and so on.
- But here’s the thing: even with these label differences, the functions of the GPIO pins are pretty much the same across both platforms.
- If you’ve been working with the NRF52840, don’t worry—you can easily adapt to the Pico.
- Just tweak the pin arrangements in your existing code, and you’re good to go!.
What did we accomplish with the Raspberry Pi Pico?
- We had a great time updating the Raspberry Pi Pico’s CircuitPython firmware and even ran a basic example.
- This session was packed with useful insights on how to work with the Raspberry Pi Pico, which is super helpful for our future programming and electronics projects.
- Plus, get ready because there’s more in store! We’ll be sharing additional tutorials and instructions in our next meet-up..