"Arduino Core for Pico" Documentation

[wisper7]

Hello all,

I have been messing around with the RP2040 Pico board through VSCode, and slowly realizing I’m probably out of my element, given that it is so brand new and there seems to be a severe lack of libraries, documentation, and general support. I finally realized that PlatformIO was using a custom Arduino Core, rather than the Pico-SDK (…that caused a lot of frustration lol). But I now see that there are 3+ Arduino Core frameworks for the board, PlatformIO’s only being one of them.

I’m trying to figure out multicore processing, which I know at least Earl Philhower’s framework seems to support. But I can’t for the life of me find any PlatformIO documentation about its Arduino Core framework, or how it implements (if at all) multicore processing.

So, is there somewhere that the framework is documented specifically? Or am I wasting my time with the multicore stuff for now? I feel like I might just need to come back to the Pico in a year after more knowledgeable programmers make life easier for all of us beginners

Anyways, thanks!

[normandunbar]

@wisper7

Earl Philhower’s framework

Earl’s Github page is a good place to start, and on there is a link to the docs which might be helpful? There is a section on multicore processing.

Although I have a couple of Picos, I haven done anything with them other than to blink the LED using the C/C++ SDK.

In case it’s useful, all the Pico and RP2040 docs are online and probably contains more info than we’ll ever need!

HTH

Cheers,
Norm.

[wisper7]

Ok, thank you! Just to clarify, are you saying that I should just switch over to installing Earl’s framework and using that instead, or that his framework is somewhat synonymous to the one used by PlatformIO. From reading his page, it sounds like I would have to use the Arduino IDE instead (ugh), so I’m guessing this means it would have to be a separate entity from PlatformIO?

[maxgerhardt]

Please read through

#include "pico/stdlib.h" causes errors

Careful - that’s a different Arduino core. On the PlatformIO side there are currently 3 platforms that support programming the Pico. A platform is basically a set of board definitions and Python logic to build particular frameworks or enable specific features: https://github.com/platformio/platform-raspberrypi is the official PlatformIO-staff made PlatformIO integration for the Pi Pico (and related). It supports only the ArduinoCore-mbed as the Arduino core. This is different to Earle Phil…

[normandunbar]

@wisper7

Just to clarify, are you saying that I should just switch over to installing Earl’s framework and using that instead

No, sorry if you got that impression, I was merely responding to your comments that you wanted to use multi-core and that this one had that ability – I though that you may have been using this one. Sorry if I misunderstood.

@wisper7

So, is there somewhere that the framework is documented specifically?

This was why I was pointing you at some docs that might have helped with your need to use multi-core.

I see @maxgerhardt has responded with another good link for you to consider. Take note of anything max has to say, he know a lot more than I do!

Cheers,
Norm.

[wisper7]

Thanks guys. I had seen that linked post at some point in my multi-hour reading, and didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I will look into using Earl’s implementation for now, or maybe just skip the multicore processing entirely. It’s a bummer PlatformIO hasn’t implemented it yet, but for a free platform I obviously can’t complain