Kevin Boone

Pico

Running CP/M on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller

This article introduces CPICOM -- an emulator for CP/M 2.2 on the Raspberry Pi microcontroller.

Categories: retrocomputing, Pico, C, Z80

Why you can sometimes connect 3.3V and 5V I2C devices (and probably shouldn't)

On websites, and in hobbyist kits for Raspberry Pi and Arduino, you'll often see I2C devices connected that have different supply voltages. This is (usually) safe and, in non-critical applications, tends to work. But why?

Categories: Raspberry Pi, electronics, embedded computing, Pico

Using ImageMagick to generate anti-aliased bitmap fonts for a microcontroller's LCD display

This article describes how to generate and use compressed, anti-aliased font data, for use in a microcontroller application.

Categories: C, Linux, embedded computing, Pico

Using the Maxim DS3231 I2C real-time clock in C on the Raspberry Pi Pico

The Maxim DS3231 I2C real-time clock is a reasonably accurate, inexpensive device, that is easy to interface to the Raspberry Pi Pico.

Categories: C, embedded computing, Pico

pico-photo-clock: an easy-to-construct Pi Pico desktop photo clock

This article describes how to construct a desktop photo clock using a Raspberry Pi Pico and some solder-free peripherals.

Categories: embedded computing, Pico

The Pi Pico, two years on

I've been using the Raspberry Pi Pico for embedded projects for the last two years or so. What do I think of it now?

Categories: embedded computing, Pico

Controlling a chain of MAX7219 LED matrices using C on a Raspberry Pi Pico

The MAX7219 IC is widely used to control an 8x8 matrix of LED, but they can be chained to create much larger displays. This article describes how the chaining works, and how to create a driver for the Raspberry Pi Pico.

Categories: software development, C, embedded computing, Pico

Making an 8x32 LED auxiliary display with a USB interface, from an LED matrix and a Raspberry Pi pico

A specific application of the Pico7219 library that I described in an earlier article.

Categories: embedded computing, Pico, electronics

Raspberry Pi Pico: loading code into RAM and running it -- part 1

This is the first of (at least) two articles on loading and running arbitrary executable code into RAM on the Pico, and running it.

Categories: C, embedded computing, Pico

Raspberry Pi Pico: loading code into RAM and running it -- part 2

This is the second of (at least) two articles on loading and running arbitrary executable code into RAM on the Pico, and running it.

Categories: C, embedded computing, Pico

Some thoughts on using a USB keyboard with the Raspberry Pi Pico

The Pi Pico has USB host support, and can work with a USB keyboard. Although there are some programming examples, the general approach to programming USB host operations is not well documented.

Categories: software development, C, embedded computing, Pico

Some thoughts on the Waveshare 3.5-inch LCD/SD module for the Raspberry Pi Pico

This is a versatile touchscreen display module with a strikingly low cost. But is it any good?

Categories: embedded computing, Pico

Using flash memory as non-volatile storage on the Pi Pico microcontroller

The Pi Pico is an impressive microcontroller for its size and cost, but it lacks specific non-volatile memory. This article explains how to use the program flash ROM for that purpose.

Categories: software development, C, Linux, embedded computing, Pico