Saturday, 8 March 2025

Programming a Pico W from the Arduino IDE

This blog describes how to set up the Arduino IDE to program the Raspberry Pi Pico W (aka Pi Cow).

It is based on the excellent YouTube video by DroneBot Workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yatxW3tMhRg

I am using a laptop with Mint installed and 

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ cat /etc/debian_version 

trixie/sid

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ uname -a

Linux rhubarb 6.8.0-54-generic #56-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat Feb  8 00:37:57 UTC 2025 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ 

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ ls -al arduino-ide_2.3.4_Linux_64bit.AppImage 

-rwxrwxr-x 1 coderdojo coderdojo 191539050 Feb 18 22:32 arduino-ide_2.3.4_Linux_64bit.AppImage

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ 

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ date

Sat 08 Mar 2025 19:03:48 GMT

coderdojo@rhubarb:~/Downloads$ 

So let's launch that Arduino 2.3.4 IDE app image..



And install the boards manager. Go to https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico for this which explains that you need to add:
https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico/releases/download/global/package_rp2040_index.json
to your preferences


Then search for "pico" in the Board Manager and install his code.. (at the time of writing this was version 4.4.4)



Then plug in the Pico W to the USB port of the laptop and in the IDE select the pico W board and its port


After this load the Basics => Blink sketch and download it to the board


Next try the WiFi -> ScanNetworls example sketch... It's output should be something like..





Beginning scan at 80439
Found 6 networks

                            SSID   ENC     BSSID         CH RSSI
                HUAWEI-B528-4197  WPA2 10:32:7E:84:41:97  8  -96
                       Tola Park  WPA2 48:5D:35:F6:D1:AA  6  -48
                 Tola Park Guest  WPA2 4A:5D:35:F6:D1:AA  6  -42
                       VM8293952  AUTO 68:02:B8:19:EC:33  1  -98
                 Horizon Wi-Free  WPA2 6A:02:A8:19:EC:33  1  -97
                       coderdojo   WPA DC:A6:32:2A:1D:52 13  -45

--- Sleeping ---




So next is to access the Kitronik onboard sensors and controls for their Autonomous Robotics Platform

https://kitronik.co.uk/products/5335-autonomous-robotics-platform-for-pico



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