wizio-pico VS pico-project-bootstrap

It seems like PlatformIO goes out of it's way to prevent me from importing stuff like this. So I decided to give https://github.com/Wiz-IO/wizio-pico/ a try, an unofficial 3rd party "platform" for the Pi Pico. However, while it does build fine, it does not automatically upload. I posted the issue here yesterday. https://github.com/Wiz-IO/wizio-pico/issues

This blog pot continues the Pico setup series and will detail how to setup a fully working debugger in VS Studio Code. Keep in mind that ultimately the steps are based on explanations from pico-debug project, and wizio-pico, but the setup is complex so I wrote a summarizing blog article. Follow along and you will be debugging your Pico C programs with the press of a simple launch button.

Getting the Raspberry Pico C SDK up and running with its complex toolchain can be simplified greatly. Thanks to the great wizio-pico project, you can setup a PlatformIO Visual Studio Code IDE in minutes and develop your Pico project with the full power of the C SDK. No need to add project dependencies to CMake files, no manual drag and drop of UF2 files to start your program. It almost feels like programming for an Arduino. And if you have a background in Arduino, you might feel delighted that you can use Arduino C to program your Pico.

There is no standard editor, but the official documentation explain how to customize Visual Studio Code with extensions that support CMake and debugging. For a concrete project setup, I shamelessly self-promote my own getting started kit: pico-project-bootstrap.

To help you get started with future projects, check out my pico-project-setup repo on Github.