Raspberry Pi Pico

I suspect the extra folders and files are from the CMake build.  This is normal where typically you create a build folder in and run CMake from there which can be be deleted after the binary is created from make.

Were you able to run the command line example they show in the Pico SDK doc?  This will tell you if your toolset and such is configured properly.

The error you are seeing seems to be associated with Ninja so I would look there, but there.

However, it appears the FindFirstFileA call seems to be associate with a Windows API call. There maybe an issue or config setting somewhere that is not right.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/nf-fileapi-findfirstfilea

Since this is all new, it might be good to post on the PicoSDK github to ensure others see the issue and it gets addressed.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk

Yes, but there isn't any point (for me) in buying a dual 133 MHz processor with a whizzy IO systems and sub controllers and then losing control over it to an interprter.

My interest in these parts would be to do stuff I can't do with other processors - which will mean coding in C (not C++).

According to the RPi docs you can drag and drop the binary from C as well. But the chip has ARM's serial debug and that's a better way to go (for my kind of work).

MK

Adafruit claims to have ported Circuitpython to the Pico. This means you could just drag and drop your code to the device which looks like a USB memory device.

Running Micropython should be almost as easy.

I suspect a lot of these will be used for driving Neopixels via the Programmable IO. Anyone else find it ironic that this dual core microcontroller will be using the PIO's self-contained "state machine" (really it's more of a tiny limited microcontroller) to communicate with the microcontrollers in each LED. Never has illuminating an LED been more over-complicated.

Hello Shabaz, thanks for the comments.

I'd spotted c/:/users and searched for it in files but not found it.

My guess is that soemthing somewhere is building up file names and is making a mistake.

Totally agree that what's needed is a nice sorted single click install - from what I can gather that's not even the case on the PI

The complexity of what the tools do is truly mind boggling - the Keil compiler puts everything 1 folder level down from the project (typically in 2 or 3 folders).

The Pico SDK is making an additional 12 folder levels down from the build folder !

MK

Hi Michael,

Line 26 contains this: c/:/users (instead of c:/users) it may be a typo in some config file, or they may not have tested their scripts on Windows properly : (

They are using a good set of tools in principle (Visual Studio Code* is the currently one of the most popular editors but has a ton of functionality hidden behind keypresses or prompts or extensions, so on the face of it it's very difficult to click and explore compared to other editors) and cmake allows many IDEs to support it. I feel raspberrypi.org or others will need to provide documentation or training links on the tools including cmake, and not rely on the existing documentation (a lot of open source projects are explained by engineers who are not good at explaining : ( or will have explained with a lot of assumptions in mind. The better training or documentation would then result in people being able to feel confident in the tools.

Another reason for the difficulty is that the tools (Visual Studio Code, cmake etc) are also used for very large projects, so they are way more complex than needed for typical microcontroller projects. But the knowledge would help developers who then move on to non-microcontroller projects too.

I reckon they may have not tested a lot on Windows (although they should have, since it's the world's most popular desktop OS). I've not had a chance to look at the documentation, I guess they are expecting users to use a Pi to build code for it : ( (I only briefly looked at the user guide, it lists instructions for Pi first) which to me seems disastrous, no sane person** would want to compile for a microcontroller target on a Pi when they have a more powerful desktop machine to do this on.

*there's also better IDEs for developing code in C or C++, CLion is great, but is chargeable.

** Perhaps there's an argument for standardised tools to make it easier, but in this case it could be supplied pre-installed and pre-configured and pre-tested, in a virtual machine or container, ready for a Pi.

The Arduino people are doing a board for it, I believe.

The problem is that the Arduino environment convienence exacts a terrible price in performance and access to hardware functions.

MK

Thanks, Michael. I'm a complete novice with these kind of systems!

Fingers crossed that they do support it under the Arduino IDE soon......

Neil

So far, badly.

The instructions for installing under Windows are brief and pretty much nothing is explained.

If (like me ) you have never used CMake, Code Studio or GCC X compiler its just a sequence of meaningless commands.

There are errors in it and some things not explained.

I think I got it to build all the example files from the command line but it throws this bizarre error when I try to build in Code Studio.

[variant] Loaded new set of variants
[kit] Successfully loaded 5 kits from C:\Users\Michael Kellett\AppData\Local\CMakeTools\cmake-tools-kits.json
[main] Configuring folder: pico-examples 
[proc] Executing command: "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake.EXE" --no-warn-unused-cli -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS:BOOL=TRUE -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug "-DCMAKE_C_COMPILER:FILEPATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain\10 2020-q4-major\bin\arm-none-eabi-gcc.exe" "-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain\10 2020-q4-major\bin\arm-none-eabi-g++.exe" -Hc:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-examples -Bc:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-examples/build -G Ninja
[cmake] Not searching for unused variables given on the command line.
[cmake] Pico SDK is located at C:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-sdk
[cmake] PICO platform is rp2040.
[cmake] PICO compiler is 
[cmake] PICO_GCC_TRIPLE defaulted to arm-none-eabi
[cmake] Using regular optimized debug build (set PICO_DEOPTIMIZED_DEBUG=1 to de-optimize)
[cmake] PICO target board is pico.
[cmake] Using board configuration from C:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-sdk/src/boards/include/boards/pico.h
[cmake] TinyUSB available at C:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/src/portable/raspberrypi/rp2040; adding USB support.
[cmake] Compiling TinyUSB with CFG_TUSB_DEBUG=1
[cmake] -- Could NOT find Doxygen (missing: DOXYGEN_EXECUTABLE) 
[cmake] ELF2UF2 will need to be built
[cmake] PIOASM will need to be built
[cmake] -- Configuring done
[cmake] -- Generating done
[cmake] -- Build files have been written to: C:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-examples/build


[main] Building folder: pico-examples 
[build] Starting build
[proc] Executing command: "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake.EXE" --build c:/Users/pico/Downloads/pico-examples/build --config Debug --target all -- -j 18
[build] ninja: error: FindFirstFileExA(c/:/users/pico/downloads/pico-sdk/src/rp2_common/boot_stage2): The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
[build] 
[build] Build finished with exit code 1

The first 20 lines are the response to config the file just opened in Code Studio

The second chunk (23 -) are what happens when you click Build in Code Studio.

Some internal thing FindFirstFileExA tries to access a file called: c/:/users/pico/downloads/pico-sdk/src/rp2_common/boot_stage2 and OS chokes on it .

Of course  I have no idea what any of this is doing.

The CMake based system seems to make dozens of sub folders for even tiny programs and re-compile tools (EL2UF2 and PIOASM) into new folders for every build.

Life is too short - I'm going to wait until a few more people have played with this and there is a bit more discussion on the web.

The processor looks as if it has some good ideas but the tools are horrible (not sure if that's inherent in the tools or the way the Pico SDK is impemented). Every year I moan about the maintenance money I pay Keil for their MDK toolset for ARM Cortex - I take it all back - when I get a new processor I just load the support package (a couple of mouse clicks) and off it goes. Not sure if RP Org will be supporting Keil  - I hope so.

Maybe others will have better luck (or be more used to the open source stuff involved.

MK

michaelkellett  Please let us know how you get on!

Mine has been shipped; due early next week. I will also need to install the support tools in W10.

Neil