Getting Started

This is a guide for how to build application running on the RP2040 microcontroller.

The pico-ice-sdk provides an API for communicating with the pico-ice hardware, also allowing to use the Raspberry Pi pico-sdk directly.

The pico-ice-sdk is organised as a normal pico-sdk project with pico_ice custom board.

A template shows how everything can be to get started.

Troubleshooting

C++ compiler not installed on this system

The pico-sdk is written in C, but uses a single C++ file to enable C++ support in the SDK. This means you need a working C++ cross compiler, often named arm-none-eabi-g++.

Even if this binary is present in your system, it might not be a full C++ installation. If you do not need C++ and want to work around this bug, you can disable the C++ support in the pico-sdk. From your project repo:

$ cd build
$ cmake .. # download the SDK if not yet done
$ sed -i '/new_delete.cpp/ d' _deps/pico-sdk-src/src/rp2_common/pico_standard_link/CMakeLists.txt
$ cmake .. # rebuild the Makefile with the fix

The GPIO LEDs do not turn on

Unlike the Raspberry Pi Pico board, which has a green LED attached to the GPIO pin 25, the pico-ice has three LEDs attached to the GPIO pin 22 (red), pin 23 (green), pin 24 (blue) Moreover, the leds are “active-low”, so you would need to turn their pin down for them to be turned on.

Using some RP2040 peripheral cause various bugs.

In order to power the FPGA, some peripherals and GPIO pins are in use by the pico-ice-sdk. In case both the firmware and SDK use the same peripheral, it is possible to use another free peripheral instance, or if none left, disable the feature of the SDK The ice_init() is responsible for setting-up all peripherals used by the SDK. Instead, calling manually each ice_init_<feature>() of interest permits to select what to enable or not in the board, and therefore keeping some more peripherals for the user.

Flashing an UF2 file does not change the memory neither restart the board

The UF2 file format contains the destination addresses of each block. In case you used other tools than those provided, it is possible that that the addresses were outside the valid range of the flash chip. Try to copy the CURRENT.UF2 to NEW.UF2 upon that same directory, and unmount the device. This should trigger a restart of the device. This restart device should appear from the debug UART: board_dfu_complete: rebooting.