Hi everyone. If, like me, you’re just starting out on your Raspberry Pi Pico journey, you’ll likely be looking for some resources to help you. This is a microcontroller, not a microcomputer, so you have to do things a bit differently.

You’ve probably found the Getting Started guide over on raspberrypi.org which has all your documentation and get-up-and-going stuff. You might also (if you’ve managed to navigate the website, which is by no means easy) have found the Get Started with MicroPython on the Raspberry Pi Pico book (which is free to download). However, sometimes you just need someone to take you through things in a friendly, clear way, almost one-to-one.

I came across some of the best tutorial videos I’ve ever seen on YouTube from an Australian company called Core Electronics. They’re actually an authorised, official reseller of the Raspberry Pi, but this was the first time I’ve met them (virtually).

Fortunately, Michael, who is the one presenting the videos, is using Windows – this is what I use, so it’s good to have that common experience of the little pitfalls you might come across. He is also, thankfully, an excellent presenter and speaker and lacks the more… annoying “YouTube-ness” that you sometimes find! 🙂

The first video I found is an introduction to programming the Pico over a USB serial link using the MicroPython “REPL” interpreter. This reads MicroPython instructions directly over the cable and runs them immediately. (This isn’t how you should work, of course, but it does replicate the Python command-line interpreter that people are used to as their first steps on the Raspberry Pi).

The second video is a much better workflow for programming and covers how to get set-up and started using the Thonny Python editor.

Finally, because everyone loves blinkies, they’ve also done a video on connecting WS2812B LEDs to the Pico and getting them all lighting up.

Going further into their YouTube Channel, it appears they’ve been doing videos for quite some time, so I’ve subscribed in the hope that I can learn more… stuff!

Definitely worth a look if you need help, and definitely worth a look if you find the whole Pico “thing” a bit mind-boggling!

I didn’t get paid to say nice things about Core Electronics! I just came across them on YouTube!