PicoW C/C++ Boilerplate Project

This is a template repository, inspired by and based on Pimoroni’s Pico C++ Boilerplate Project. It is specifically designed to help leverage the additional features of the PicoW, but obviously parts of it that do not require the WiFi / Bluetooth functionality will be transferable to a regular Pico.

These pages attempt to document everything you’ll need to know to get developing; it does not attempt to teach you C/C++; there are way better books available to do that.

The primary assumption is also that you’re working on a Linux box, or Raspian, or at least WSL under Windows. Although in theory it’s possible to build ‘natively’ under Windows, I no longer really have a Windows desktop to test it on.

The Overall Process

• Setting Up Your Environment explains what you need to have installed and configured to be able to build projects based on this template.
• Creating Your Project walks you through setting up a new repository based on this template, and preparing to build.
• Building Your Project explains how to actually run the build process, and gives your your uf2 file.

Boilerplate Features

• Pre-built Github Actions to automatically compile your project with every check-in, and generate ZIP package files with every release.
• USB Mass Storage Device presents a filesystem to the host computer, along with functions to allow your project to read and write files to that in-flash filesystem. This is done while preserving the usual stdio USB functionality of the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK.

Optional Extras

These extras can be found in the opt/ directory; they are each single-file single-purpose packages that you use if you need them, and ignore them if you don’t!

• Configuration File Handling is a drop-in example of how you can leverage the USB Mass Storage Device filesystem to easily offer users a way to edit a local configuration file.
• HTTP(S) Client offers a simple way of fetching requests from websites, as cleanly as possible.

Further Examples

• tba

Share and Enjoy!