Raspberry Pi Pico - PIO explained

Introduction to Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and its PIO - Programmable I/O block.
You will see:
- what is so great about the RPi Pico's RP2040 comparing to other microcontrollers
- what is PIO, how it works and how to use it
- PIO's assembler instructions
- how to write programmes for the PIO
- 4 different example PIO programmes explained line by line

[cbmeeks]

This is a great video! Please keep up more on the Pico. And yeah, I would love to know more about DMA with the Pico. Thanks!

[AndersNielsenAA]

I don’t believe I could’ve wrapped my head around PIO better spending 50 minutes any other way. Thank you!

[AdiGitalEU]

Great Video and explanation. Since PIO depends on DMA please do video about it. Would be fantastic addition.

[frozendude]

You know you can remove two NOPs if you add delay to mov x, y on line 8, and irq clear 0 which you should also move from line 33 to line 24, because there is no reason the CPU has to wait until the reset is complete to load the new data right?
Ah well, that is all academic I suppose.

[DejitaruJin]

Absolutely the gold standard for PIO documentation. I've been flailing about for days trying to find any kind of tutorial, but the most I found before this was just the basic list of instructions with no information on options or capabilities. "`PULL BLOCK`? Where did you define BLOCK, what address is that?" This video finally answered pretty much all of my questions at a level I am comfortable with, and I can't thank you enough.

[brianschwind]

This is an excellent introduction to the PIO, well done! I'll be trying to write my first PIO programs soon.

[GodmanchesterGoblin]

Your explanation of the PIO and its use with detailed coding examples is exemplary. I don't know the Pico that well, but I developed processor hardware in the 1980s and wrote plenty of 16 bit assembly language code back then. I understood everything that you described pretty much on the first pass. Many videos on the Pico take too many shortcuts, but for me, this was just perfect! The video and audio quality were also perfect in my view. Thank you. I shall now look at some of your other videos. The 80C188 with the Pico is fascinating.

[sweetlilmre]

Hands down the best PIO video I've seen on yt so far, this has inspired me to try PIO out. Just wish the algo had suggested this earlier 😂

[danman]

Very informative. On first learning about the Pico, my thoughts were "just another microcontroller" but this shows it has a lot of power with the PIO than even the ESP32 might have.

Using the Pico for the 8088 project might be considered cheating though.

I also got very lost with the last several 8088 videos.

[TomLeg]

I wonder about having the IRQ clear after the long delay. If you clear IRQ before the delay, you can do that for "free" as part of the delay; the main processor tasks would have more time to rest the buffers, among their other tasks. But overall an excellent description of PIO, I finally understand a few things.

[slim_cana]

S U P E R interesting video. I'm getting my teeth in the PIO for a full duplex SPI interface, and this was a really good and detailed introduction. The only possible thing I would recommend in your future videos would be some sort of logic analyzer captures, that way we could've seen the flaws of the first design for instance.

Thanks for sharing!

[bitlong]

Wow… this is what happens when you got no experience and just skim over the manual….I didn’t know pi pico had this kind of stuff. I just so happened to have few of these with wifi laying around. While waiting for the 8088 to arrive will dive into this stuff. Love this channel! Learning something new on every video.

[stevenadriz]

Hello, is possible use two diffrent PIO programs? For example RGB and tone generator.

[jonpinkley]

Thanks for the informative video! Your explanation and demo of the side effect of side-set at the end was helpfull. Thanks again.

[janakaone]

In a world of circuits and wires,
The Pico Pio shines with its own fires.
A small board with power to spare,
It's a true delight for those who dare.

With GPIO pins that are easy to use,
The Pico Pio is quite the muse.
From sensors to motors, it does it all,
And programmers can have a ball.

The possibilities are endless,
From robotics to home automation, it's relentless.
The Pico Pio is a gift to behold,
With its power and capabilities untold.

So let us all hail the Pico Pio,
A true gem for programmers in the know.
With its Raspberry Pi roots,
It's a small board that bears lots of fruits.

[helmutzollner]

Excellent flic. Thank you for sharing.

[MillaGamer]

Excelent! u can do more videos, of use of the PIO assembler instructions? like micropython sintax?

[quicknik]

This is acctually a similar approach that has PSOC microcontrollers (previously "Cypress Semiconductors", meanwhile "Infineon") implemented for more than a decade. So called UDB, i.e. Universal Digital Blocks, that can be programmed using Verilog (or use the graphical interface to do so). Very helpfull for just such tiny problems, that would otherwise intensively occupy the CPU.

[HendersonHood]

Very good video, detailed video. But we all know videos of this quality are rare to find. The authors of excellent content don't seem to keep then coming: However, the poor videos keep on coming.

[jstro-hobbytech]

Great video. Most people use the pico to show novice level python. I like how you used c++ and op codes. Thank you. You are a professional programmer I suspect. I majored in search over 2 decades ago and graduated top of my class but never wanted to move away to work so I just started programming again about 4 years ago and noticed all these pseudocode-like languages dominating the sciences and it saddened me.