MicroPico Visual Studio Code Extension (aka Pico-W-Go)

NOTE: The extension was renamed from Pico-W-Go to MicroPico but the ID remains paulober.pico-w-go for now. So if you have any problems after v3.2.1 make sure you have taken this into account

"MicroPico" is a Visual Studio Code extension designed to simplify and accelerate the development of MicroPython projects for the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W boards. This tool streamlines the coding process, providing code highlighting, auto-completion, code snippets, and project management features, all tailored for the seamless development experience with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W microcontrollers.

Auto-completion based on Raspberry Pi Pico W MicroPython firmware: RPI_PICO_W-20230904-unstable-v1.20.0-441-gbf35eefc6.uf2

Works with:

Platform	x64	arm64	armhf
Windows	✅	✅	❌
macOS	✅	✅	❌
Linux	✅	✅	✅

Features

• Auto-completion and docs
• Pseudo terminal integration for communication with MicroPython REPL on a Pico (w) board (with support for tab-completion)
• Running / Transferring files to / from your board
• Built-in virtual-workspace provider for Raspberry Pi Pico (W) boards

Requirements

• MicroPython firmware flashed onto the Raspberry Pi Pico (W):

  • See Raspberry Pi docs for help.

• Python 3.9 or newer (with pip) (user install; Microsoft Store version not supported but may work) installed on your system and in your PATH.

• pyserial pip package: pip install pyserial

Visual Studio Code extensions:

• ms-python.python | [Install] [Show]
• visualstudioexptteam.vscodeintellicode | [Install] [Show]
• ms-python.vscode-pylance | [Install] [Show]

Environment (Linux only):

On most Linux installations the device file of the Pico serial port is owned by root and a group you normal don't have by default (except on Raspberry Pi OS). This leads to timeout and access denied errors when MicroPico tries to connect to the Pico. There are three ways how to solve this problem:

• See Wiki | Linux for a small guide

Getting started

• First of all open a folder and run > MicroPico > Configure Project command via Ctrl+Shift+P (or the equivalent on your platform) VS Code command palette. This will import stubs for autocompletion and the settings into your project folder. For the auto-completion to work, the extension prompts you (after project configuration) to install recommended extensions mentioned in #Requirements.

• If you have trouble running > MicroPico > Configure Project, try setting following settings in your global VSCode settings.json:

"micropico.pythonPath": "/path/to/your/python/executable/python3"

• Have the onboard LED flashing in under 5 minutes:

Note that accessing the onboard LED is slightly different for the Pico W compared with the Pico (Page 15 Chapter 3.4). So, you can use the following script in place of flash.py:

from machine import Pin
from utime import sleep

pin = Pin("LED", Pin.OUT)

print("LED starts flashing...")
while True:
    try:
        pin.toggle()
        sleep(1) # sleep 1sec
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        break
pin.off()
print("Finished.")

• To run your program, run > MicroPico > Run current file on Pico in your Python file's tab. You can also use the status bar button "Run " at the bottom of VS Code window.

• To stop the execution of the currently running program, run > MicroPico > Stop execution. The "Stop" button at the status bar does the same.

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Extension Settings

This extension contributes the following settings:

• micropico.autoConnect: Ignores any 'device address' setting and automatically connects to the top item in the serial-port list (of Picos).
• micropico.manualComDevice: If autoConnect is set to false MicroPico will automatically connect to the serial port specified here.
• micropico.syncFolder: This folder will be uploaded to the pyboard when using the sync button. Leave empty to sync the complete project. (only allows folders within the project). Use a path relative to the project you opened in vscode, without leading or trailing slash.
• micropico.additionalSyncFolders: Specifies additional folders that can be selected as upload sources when uploading a project. If left empty, the sync will be performed based on the folder specified in the 'syncFolder' setting. Only folders within the project are allowed. Specify the path relative to the project you have opened in Visual Studio Code, without a leading or trailing slash.
• micropico.syncAllFileTypes: If enabled, all files will be uploaded no matter the file type. The list of file types below will be ignored.
• micropico.syncFileTypes: All types of files that will be uploaded to the board, seperated by comma. All other filetypes will be ignored during an upload (or download) action.
• micropico.pyIgnore: Comma separated list of files and folders to ignore when uploading relative to syncFolder (no wildcard or regular expressions supported except **/<file|folder> to exclude an item by its name in every sub folder). Use <additionalSyncFolder>:file/to/exclude.py to create sync folder exclusive exclusion rules (all other rules will always be applied relative to the selected sync folder). Replace additionalSyncFolder with a value from your micropico.additionalSyncFolders setting or the value from micropico.syncFolder.
• micropico.openOnStart: Automatically open the MicroPico terminal (Pico (W) vREPL) and connect to the board after starting VS Code.
• micropico.statusbarButtons: Select which buttons to show in the statusbar (DO NOT CHANGE, unless you know what you are doing)
• micropico.gcBeforeUpload: Run garbage collection before uploading files to the board. This will free up some memory usefull when uploading large files but adds about a second or two to the upload process.
• micropico.softResetAfterUpload: Soft-resets your board after any upload action. Usefull if you are developing with main.py or boot.py.
• micropico.pythonPath: Path to the Python interpreter. Defaults to null so it will try to auto-detect a suitable python installation. NOTE: Must be deleted from global settings.json when switing between operating systems and settings-sync is enabled!

Extension Context Keys

• micropico.isActivated: set when the extension is activated
• micropico.isConnected: set when the extension is connected to a Pico

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Note

• Most doc-strings for MicroPython functions (descriptions/hints) are from docs.micropython.org by © 2014-2023 Damien P. George, Paul Sokolovsky, and contributors.
• For licensing purposes: Prior to version v3.0.0 of this extension the codebase was a fork of github.com/cpwood/Pico-Go which is a derivative product of Pymakr by Pycom Limited.