4 ms·

I was on the fence about using it for a small commercial project I'm doing, but the lifetime has been put out long enough (2041 at this point), and it's so frea

I was on the fence about using it for a small commercial project I'm doing, but the lifetime has been put out long enough (2041 at this point), and it's so freaking cheap that I'm going to do a one-time buy of 10 years worth of parts. Lack of code security and onboard flash weren't dealbreakers for me here, but others will have more stringent requirements. QSPI is so incredibly cheap now.

amelius 2y ago
Ok. One thing I'm worried about is that the tooling is made for hobbyists only. Is there a way to do everything from the commandline with FOSS tools and without installing e.g. the Arduino-IDE?
- dgroshev 2y ago
  I'm not sure how things are in the C land, but if you write Rust take a look at this book [1], Embassy has a very good support for the RP2040. Probe-rs [2] works perfectly well with GDB and the CLion debugger. [1]: https://embassy.dev/book/ https://embassy.dev/book/ [2]: https://probe.rs/ https://probe.rs/
- mordae 2y ago
  Yes. Pico SDK is C with CMake and Rust is bare metal (I think).
- joezydeco 2y ago
  I'm using the CircuitPython environment. I'm editing in vi and writing directly to the USB storage on the RP2040, which reboots upon write and runs the code. It's no big deal. There's also a virtual UART off that USB connection for light debugging.
- riskable 2y ago
  Since the RP2040 uses external flash you can pre-program the flash chips before they even get soldered on to the board. Other standard methods still work like breaking out the debug pins to some spot on your PCB so you can quickly "pogo flash" it as part of an assembly process.
- silvanocerza 2y ago
  Maybe with the Arduino CLI?
- dave78 2y ago
  > Is there a way to do everything from the commandline with FOSS tools and without installing e.g. the Arduino-IDE? Yes. In fact, the official getting started guide[0] is all command-line based, with an optional chapter later on about using VS Code if you wish. I have a low volume product in production using the RP2040 and I've never once opened up any sort of GUI for developing the software or programming it. [0] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/getting-started-with-pico.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/getting-started-with...

amelius 2y ago

Ok. One thing I'm worried about is that the tooling is made for hobbyists only. Is there a way to do everything from the commandline with FOSS tools and without installing e.g. the Arduino-IDE?

dgroshev 2y ago
I'm not sure how things are in the C land, but if you write Rust take a look at this book [1], Embassy has a very good support for the RP2040. Probe-rs [2] works perfectly well with GDB and the CLion debugger. [1]: https://embassy.dev/book/ https://embassy.dev/book/ [2]: https://probe.rs/ https://probe.rs/
mordae 2y ago
Yes. Pico SDK is C with CMake and Rust is bare metal (I think).
joezydeco 2y ago
I'm using the CircuitPython environment. I'm editing in vi and writing directly to the USB storage on the RP2040, which reboots upon write and runs the code. It's no big deal. There's also a virtual UART off that USB connection for light debugging.
riskable 2y ago
Since the RP2040 uses external flash you can pre-program the flash chips before they even get soldered on to the board. Other standard methods still work like breaking out the debug pins to some spot on your PCB so you can quickly "pogo flash" it as part of an assembly process.
silvanocerza 2y ago
Maybe with the Arduino CLI?
dave78 2y ago
> Is there a way to do everything from the commandline with FOSS tools and without installing e.g. the Arduino-IDE? Yes. In fact, the official getting started guide[0] is all command-line based, with an optional chapter later on about using VS Code if you wish. I have a low volume product in production using the RP2040 and I've never once opened up any sort of GUI for developing the software or programming it. [0] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/getting-started-with-pico.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/pico/getting-started-with...