Raspberry Pi Pico – Windows Quickstart

This article is about how to blink the LED on a Raspberry Pi Pico from the Windows operating system.

• Prerequisite Software
• Setup Ubuntu (WSL)
• Build the Blink the LED example
• Run the Blink the LED program

This tutorial is based off of Chapter 2 – The SDK from the Raspberry Pi Pico Quickstart PDF

Prerequisite software

We will be using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to compile the Raspberry Pi Pico code

• Run PowerShell as Admin and execute the following command

wsl --install

• For More info on installing WSL click here

Now we should have the WSL enabled and an Ubuntu distro installed

Setup Ubuntu (WSL)

• We will be following section 2.1 Get the SDK and Examples here

Update Ubuntu

sudo apt upgrade

Create a directory named pico

$ mkdir pico
$ cd pico

Clone the pico-skd and pico-examples git repos

$ cd pico-sdk
$ git submodule update --init
$ cd ..
$ git clone -b master https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples.git

Install the toolchain

$ sudo apt install cmake gcc-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi build-essential

Build the Blink the LED example

change directories into the pico-examples repo directory and create a build directory

$ cd pico-examples
$ mkdir build
$ cd build

Set the env to the location of the pico-sdk directory

$ export PICO_SDK_PATH=../../pico-sdk

Run the cmake to prepare the build directory

$ cmake ..

Change directories into the blink directory and then build the project

$ cd blink
$ make -j4

There should now be a blink.elf and a blink.uf2 in the build directory

Run the Blink the LED program

The final step is to connect the Raspberry Pi Pico as a mass storage device. Do this by holding down the BOOTSEL button then plugin in the micro usb cable

Lastly copy blink.uf2 to the Raspberry Pi Pico mass storage device and the Raspberry Pi Pico should auto detect once the blink.uf2 is copied and start executing the program.

That is it we are now blinking the LED!!!