Raspberry Pi Debug Probe

Overview

The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe [1] is a board based on the RP2040 microcontroller from Raspberry Pi Ltd. The board exposes four GPIO pins via two 3-pin connectors, and the board has a USB micro B connector.

Note

This is for using the Raspberry Pi Debug Probe board as a general-purpose microcontroller board, not using it as a tool for debugging other boards. See below for how to load the board with the official firmware, which is needed if you would use this board for its original debugging purpose.

Hardware

Microcontroller Raspberry Pi RP2040, with a max frequency of 133 MHz
Dual ARM Cortex M0+ cores
264 kByte SRAM
2 Mbyte QSPI flash
6 GPIO pins, of which 4 are exposed via 3-pin connectors
UART
USB micro B connector
Boot button
5 user LEDs

Default Zephyr Peripheral Mapping

LED D1 red : GPIO2
LED D2 green (close to UART connector) : GPIO7
LED D3 yellow (close to UART connector) : GPIO8
LED D4 green (close to DBUG connector) : GPIO15
LED D5 yellow (close to DBUG connector) : GPIO16
Connector J2 (UART) pin 1 (TX) : GPIO4 UART1
Connector J2 (UART) pin 3 (RX) : GPIO6
Connector J2 (UART) pin 3 (RX) via input buffer : GPIO5 UART1
Connector J3 (DBUG) pin 1 (CLK) : GPIO12
Connector J3 (DBUG) pin 3 (DIO) : GPIO14
Connector J3 (DBUG) pin 3 (DIO) via input buffer : GPIO13
Connector J4 pin 1 : GPIO0
Connector J4 pin 3 : GPIO1

The pins in the “UART” and “DBUG” connectors are using 100 Ohm series resistors.

The connector J4 is not populated by default, so you need to solder a 3-pin header to the board in order to use that connector.

Supported Features

The rpi_debug_probe board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board: Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.
2 / 2: Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.
vnd,foo: Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

`rpi_debug_probe/rp2040` target

Type	Location	Description	Compatible
CPU	on-chip	ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU2	`arm,cortex-m0+`
ADC	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico ADC1	`raspberrypi,pico-adc`
Clock control	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico clock controller node1	`raspberrypi,pico-clock-controller`
	on-chip	The representation of Raspberry Pi Pico’s clock11 2	`raspberrypi,pico-clock`
	on-chip	The representation of Raspberry Pi Pico’s PLL2	`raspberrypi,pico-pll`
	on-chip	The representation of Raspberry Pi Pico ring oscillator1	`raspberrypi,pico-rosc`
	on-chip	The representation of Raspberry Pi Pico external oscillator1	`raspberrypi,pico-xosc`
Counter	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico timer1	`raspberrypi,pico-timer`
DMA	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico DMA1	`raspberrypi,pico-dma`
Flash controller	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico flash controller1	`raspberrypi,pico-flash-controller`
GPIO & Headers	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico GPIO1	`raspberrypi,pico-gpio`
GPIO & Headers	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico GPIO Port1	`raspberrypi,pico-gpio-port`
I2C	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico I2C2	`raspberrypi,pico-i2c`
Interrupt controller	on-chip	ARMv6-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller) controller1	`arm,v6m-nvic`
LED	on-board	Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1	`gpio-leds`
Miscellaneous	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico PIO2	`raspberrypi,pico-pio`
MTD	on-chip	Flash node1	`soc-nv-flash`
MTD	on-board	Fixed partitions of a flash (or other non-volatile storage) memory1	`fixed-partitions`
Pin control	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico Pin Controller1	`raspberrypi,pico-pinctrl`
PWM	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico PWM1	`raspberrypi,pico-pwm`
Regulator	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico core supply regurator1	`raspberrypi,core-supply-regulator`
Reset controller	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico Reset Controller1	`raspberrypi,pico-reset`
RTC	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico RTC1	`raspberrypi,pico-rtc`
Sensors	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico family temperature sensor node1	`raspberrypi,pico-temp`
Serial controller	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico UART1 1	`raspberrypi,pico-uart`
SPI	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico SPI2	`raspberrypi,pico-spi`
SRAM	on-chip	Generic on-chip SRAM1	`mmio-sram`
Timer	on-chip	ARMv6-M System Tick1	`arm,armv6m-systick`
USB	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico USB Device Controller1	`raspberrypi,pico-usbd`
Watchdog	on-chip	Raspberry Pi Pico Watchdog1	`raspberrypi,pico-watchdog`

Programming and Debugging

The rpi_debug_probe board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

	flash	debug	rtt	attach	debugserver
blackmagicprobe	✅	✅		✅
jlink	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
openocd	✅	✅ (default)	✅	✅	✅
pyocd	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
uf2	✅ (default)

By default programming is done via the USB connector. Press and hold the BOOTSEL button when connecting the board to your computer. It will appear as a USB mass-storage device named “RPI-RP2”. Building your application will result in a build/zephyr/zephyr.uf2 file. Drag and drop the file to the USB mass storage unit, and the board will be reprogrammed.

It is also possible to program and debug the board via the SWDIO and SWCLK pads, exposed as testpads on the back of the board. You need to solder connectors to the pads. Then a separate programming hardware tool is required, and for example the openocd software is used. Typically the OPENOCD and OPENOCD_DEFAULT_PATH values should be set when building, and the --runner openocd argument should be used when flashing. For more details on programming RP2040-based boards, see Programming and Debugging.

If you would like to restore the official firmware on the Debug Probe, download the latest firmware [2].

Flashing

To run the Blinky sample:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b rpi_debug_probe samples/basic/blinky/
west flash

Try also the Hello World and Console over USB CDC ACM samples.