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Description
As simliar to e.g. STM32 and AVR with board_build.core = ..
, it should be supported to switch to a different Arduino core implementation, the most popular of which is https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico.
Needs a PlatformIO builder script, a new framwork package and the necessary platform scripts changes here.
Activity
sstaub commentedon Sep 20, 2021
With the new release (1.9.5) it should possible to integrate in PIO
maxgerhardt commentedon Sep 20, 2021
While earlephilhower/arduino-pico#250 has been merged I am blocked by earlephilhower/pico-quick-toolchain#4, earlephilhower/pico-quick-toolchain#5 and open debugging issues described in earlephilhower/arduino-pico#66 (comment) before I'm able to sensibly merge https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-raspberrypi back. A WIP version is available at https://github.com/maxgerhardt/pio-pico-core-earlephilhower-test.
sstaub commentedon Oct 26, 2021
Any news about?
Tomwhiting1987 commentedon Oct 27, 2021
Hi Max, the WIP version of this code - are we able to add this address as a platform using the Advanced Installation in Platform IO? Or are there other instructions I need to do to be able to use arduino-pico in PIO? Thanks, Tom
maxgerhardt commentedon Oct 27, 2021
@sstaub
Other than the Pico openocd repo finally merging Picoprobe support into the main branch for unification, not much.
@Tomwhiting1987
You don't need to go through the GUI to install it, you have to reference the new platform in the
platformio.ini
of the project. Even if you did install through the "Advanced Installation", it wouldn't be picked up if the specialplatform = ..
instruction wasn't there. Best to use theplatformio.ini
from the reference project or the more minimal one shown in the documentation I wrote: https://arduino-pico.readthedocs.io/en/latest/platformio.htmlTomwhiting1987 commentedon Nov 4, 2021
Thanks very much for this @maxgerhardt , much appreciated - seems to be working well now, it's very impressive! Regarding debugging, is there a way to use pico-debug with the earlephilhower/arduino-pico core in platformio? And if so, how do you do this?
maxgerhardt commentedon Nov 4, 2021
@Tomwhiting1987 as of now I even have problems with an extern debug probe, picoprobe, as described in earlephilhower/arduino-pico#66 (comment). There seems to be some (?) issue with the placement of functions in flash compared to RAM. I think I achieved my partially-working debugging by hacking the linker script to place all crucial things in RAM instead of Flash except the bootloader and vector table of course) I've not yet touched the picodebug path of uploading or debugging.
Tomwhiting1987 commentedon Nov 4, 2021
Ok no problem, thanks for the update @maxgerhardt. Is it likely that when this core is fully supported as a platform in platformio, we will be able to use the PIO debug in the GUI?
maxgerhardt commentedon Nov 4, 2021
I would only merge it when it's feature-complete with all debugging working, so yes.
sstaub commentedon Nov 9, 2021
Why wait for debugging feature? I don't think that all users need it really.
jhmaloney commentedon Jan 24, 2022
What's the status of getting this included as an official Platformio framework?
Thanks to @maxgerhardt, I've been using it in Platformio for the past several days and it's working great! (I don't need the hardware debugging features.)
I've used both the official, mbed-based framework for the RP2040 and this one by Earle Philhower, and I much prefer this one. For MicroBlocks, the generated code is smaller and uses much less RAM. Some things, like pin IO, also appear to be faster. I like the fact that this framework supports LittleFS, although I haven't used that yet, and I'm seeing that Adafruit and others have created libraries around this framework. Finally, I found it easier to dig into the low level code for things like gpio and i2c in the Philhower framework. (I may have missed something, but I couldn't actually find the source code for the lowest levels in the mbed-based framework.)
In short, I'd love to see this framework supported officially by Platformio.
I've worked a bit with Ivan and the Platformio team in the past, so if it is helpful I can add my voice to those requesting that it be supported officially in whatever way makes sense.
maxgerhardt commentedon Jan 24, 2022
We're currently in the process of adding all board JSON files that the Arduino-Pico core supports in earlephilhower/arduino-pico#426, and I've also pinged Earle again on the publishing of the toolchain packages, which are needed.
If I see that getting debugging to work is really too much of a hassle right now, I'll push for a publication without (good / complete) debug support. Gotta prepare for a storm of 'why not working??' issues then though.
jhmaloney commentedon Jan 24, 2022
Fantastic! Let me know if you need help to convince Ivan to include this in Platformio. I know he was resistant in early days to having two Arduino frameworks for the RP2040, but over the past nine months the strengths and stability of this framework have become clear so I'm hoping he will reconsider.
episource commentedon Mar 13, 2022
I've prepared an alternative fork with support for earlephilhower/arduino-pico : relevant branch is episource/platform-raspberrypi#my-platform-pico.
Main differences to maxgerhardt's approach:
toolchain-pico
, but reuses build tools of mbed core (toolchain-gccarmnoneeabi
,tool-openocd-raspberrypi
)Adafruit TinyUSB Library
ifUSE_TINYUSB
is not defined (no need to useldf_mode=chain+
or doing this explicitly)pico
,rp2040
andearlephilhower
are synonyms-DUSE_TINYUSB
currently also fails (due to not usingtoolchain-pico
)libpico.a
toolchain-pico
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