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141 points gadgetoid | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.5s | source

I've been trying to make accessible and beautiful GPIO pinouts since I started one for the Raspberry Pi in 2013 [1]. I've since given the Raspberry Pi Pico [2] and Pico 2 [3] microcontrollers the same treatment when they launched.

Recently I've updated these with a new "Upside-down" view to complement the rear view, giving a pinout in the right orientation to match your project.

The Pico sites are all hand-coded single HTML pages with supporting CSS and minimal JS. They are set up to optionally install as a "Desktop" web app. They also degrade into a somewhat usable table in lieu of CSS and use vector graphics (for the board itself) to be viewable and printable at any size.

Finally, hidden behind "Advanced" is a pinout of the test pads and special function pins!

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20130505194305/pi.gadgetoid.com/... [2] - https://pico.pinout.xyz [3] - https://pico2.pinout.xyz

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moffkalast ◴[] No.44529577[source]
That's pretty nice, a lot like pinout.xyz as others mention. Something that would really set it apart would be to be able to select pins and functionality and have other pins greyed out that can't be used in parallel.

At least that's my main pain point when working with microcontrollers. They give you like 20 pins and you plan out all the functionality and then it turns out that one of those pins is like an EEPROM pin that needs to be low at boot or linked to something else internally or some shenanigans like that and the idea is actually completely impossible to implement (looking at you ESP32-CAM lmao). Or PWM channel conflicts that set some specific sets of pins to the same frequency and the like. It would be such a great workflow step to be able to verify if something would theoretically work given the known limitations at least.

Microcontrollers are like if a PC had 4 USB ports and if you used two of them the third and fourth just stopped working cause nobody intended all four to be used at the same time. Absolutely maddening.

replies(1): >>44529922 #
1. Zanfa ◴[] No.44529922[source]
For inspiration, STM32Cube is otherwise PoS software, but it has a pretty decent utility for exactly this for most of their STM32 MCU lineup. Why they didn’t just make it a website is beyond me, but it is what it is.
replies(1): >>44531312 #
2. gadgetoid ◴[] No.44531312[source]
I recently started building something like this for the RP2350A chip [1], deeply inspired by both STM32Cube and also by avoiding recreating the horror of STM32Cube.

I’m currently failing to not build STM32Cube for Pico though, the idea keeps gnawing away at me. There are some idiosyncrasies that my micro site doesn’t quite capture. Though perhaps it could.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44520091