To continue along, you'll need a few additional pieces of hardware: Not exactly setting the world on fire here, but it's a good next step for those of us just learning the Pico and Micropython! In this section, we will turn an external LED on and off using a push-button. Let's take our Pico journey to another level by integrating it with some external devices. You should see the following in the built-in terminal window:Įnter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Provided your Pico is still plugged in, the extension will automatically discover any connected boards.
CAN YOU CODE PYTHON IN VISUAL STUDIO CODE
If you've never installed a VS Code extension before (you're missing out!), just head to the Extensions tab and search for Pico-Go:
CAN YOU CODE PYTHON IN VISUAL STUDIO INSTALL
A fine example of this is the Pico-Go extension that we will install and use to connect to our Pico from VS Code. The beauty of VS Code is its massive extension marketplace. Your Pico will automatically reboot.and now you are running MicroPython on your Pico!.Drag-and-drop the downloaded UF2 file onto RPI-RP2.Browse available drives and look for "RPI-RP2".Push and hold the BOOTSEL button and plug your Pico into your computer.Navigate to the Raspberry Pi Pico docs and click on the "Getting started with MicroPython" tab:įollow the instructions provided under "Drag and drop MicroPython" (summarized for you here): Thankfully the folks at Raspberry Pi have done the heavily lifting to let us install MicroPython easily. But.MicroPython isn't supported out of the box. You program your Pico's firmware by holding down the BOOTSEL button, connecting it to your computer via USB, and dragging-and-dropping a file on to it. Sound off in the comments if you have any suggestions! Also, I couldn't find a reliable way of installing MicroPython on Windows. NOTE: As of this writing, Homebrew doesn't support MicroPython installation on Apple Silicon M1 Macs. You can use Homebrew on macOS brew install micropython to do so. Lastly I might recommend installing MicroPython locally to avoid any "missing imports" issues when linting your code in VS Code. You can get all of these (and more) with the Python Extension Pack. Python - Linting, debugging, you name it, for Python.Pylance - IntelliSense on steroids for Python.MagicPython - Advanced syntax highlighting for Python 3.I'm a big fan of meeting developers where they are (via popular languages AND tooling), so leveraging the uber-popular Visual Studio Code for developing on my Pico is where I'm going to start.Īside from the productivity improvements you get from VS Code out of the box, for Python-specific development there are a few additional extensions I highly recommend: I'm missing my productivity extensions, syntax autocompletion, error highlighting, and built-in terminal provided by Visual Studio Code. The problem with Thonny is that it only takes you so far. If you have previous experience working with Raspberry Pi and MicroPython, your default IDE is probably Thonny:ĭon't get me wrong, Thonny is a super fun little IDE to work with. The Pico port of MicroPython also includes additional modules for accessing Pico-specific hardware. MicroPython, being a trimmed down implementation of Python, is a nearly perfect solution for programming your Pico. MicroPython is a lean and efficient implementation of the Python 3 programming language that includes a small subset of the Python standard library and is optimised to run on microcontrollers and in constrained environments.Īnd recall, we are working on a $4 MCU with minimal memory (264KB). The MicroPython docs do a nice job of explaining what it is: While I fully admire all of you C developers out there, I gravitate towards higher level languages like Python due to their ease of use and developer experience. Let's take a look at how we can go from unboxing our Pico to becoming productive IoT developers by utilizing an established language (MicroPython) and a universally adored IDE (Visual Studio Code).Īs just mentioned, you can develop on the Pico MCU using either C/C++ or MicroPython. As with other Raspberry Pi hardware, it's developer-friendly and can be programmed with C/C++ and MicroPython (a Python implementation for microcontrollers). Think in terms of controlling motors, reading sensors, cellular connectivity, and even machine learning. the Raspberry Pi 1/2/3/4 models), the Pico was designed for use in a variety of physical computing solutions.
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While Raspberry Pis are best known as single board computers (e.g. This $4 USD (not a typo!) device is not only a low-cost entry into the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, it's also surprisingly useful for embedded IoT development.
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released their first microcontroller board, the Raspberry Pi Pico.