Coding · ·

Pi Pico - tips, documentation and troubleshooting

General information about the Pico

You should get familiar with the Pi Pico documentation and in particular the Pinout diagram for the Pico, shown below:

Tips

You can still console.log and you'll see it in the mock-terminal on the website
To debug in Bun, you would need to mock any Kaluma-specific APIs, eg with let pinMode = () => {}; digitalToggle = () => {}
Create circuit diagrams with Fritzing (download)

Troubleshooting

Device unresponsive?

If your device no longer responds or you can no longer flash to the device, it's possible your code is causing a problem (eg because of an infinite loop) and you need to remove it.
You'll need to skip code loading on boot by setting GP22 to GND (ie connecting pins 28 and 29).
With the Pi Pico booted without loading the code, send a simple JS file that you know works to the Pico with the "Run on Pico" button.
You can now disconnect the cable between GP22 and GND.
If it still isn't responding:
- close mathsuniverse.com/pico and open https://kalumajs.org/ide/ instead for now
- click 'Connect'
- write console.log(1) as your code
- click 'Flash'
- ... you should now be able to return to mathsuniverse.com/pico and 'Flash bootloader' then continue as before

Careful using `delay`

Kaluma lets you pause for eg 1s with delay(1000), but be very careful using this as it blocks everything and may make you think your device is broken! Be especially careful setting this value to values more than a few seconds.
Instead, you could consider using setTimeout() or adding a custom sleep function which does the same thing but doesn't block but requires you to add some await and async keywords around the place
let sleep = ms => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms))

Call this function with await sleep(1000) but you must be within an async function which has the word async in front eg async function doThing () {} or let x = await () => {}, plus anything calling the function which uses async should await it, like below:

let sleep = ms => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms))

async function doThing () {
  // ...
  await sleep(1000)
  // ...
}

async function main () {
  // ...
  await doThing() // need to await here too as doThing() uses await
  // ...
}

main()