Pico_ada

Three practical serial output methods together with complete example programs for sending and receiving data.

I wasn’t happy with the original Chapter 7 siren, so I gave it the full treatment: a wailing PWM siren plus rotating NeoPixel police lights — all running cleanly across both cores using the Jorvik profile.

In this chapter we connect both active and passive buzzers to the Pico. We start with a simple button-controlled doorbell, improve the passive buzzer with bit-banging, and finally create a clean sweeping alert tone using the Pico’s PWM hardware. We also look at inductive-load protection and why a diode is essential.

From understanding the WS2812 protocol to writing our own PIO code and creating colourful animations – everything you need to make NeoPixels dance with Ada on the Pico.

Extend the simple LED examples to full-colour control with an RGB LED. Create a reusable Pico.Analog.RGB_LED package and explore two sketches: random colours (using the embedded runtime) and a smooth colour-wheel transition.

In this chapter we create a reusable Pico.Analog package for PWM-based analogue output. We start with a classic breathing light, then move on to a flowing light bar. Along the way the MSO-5102B reveals the real behaviour of our code, and we discover (and fix) a subtle bug in the experimental RP2350 HAL.

In this chapter we turn ten LEDs into a flowing light bar. We start with the basic Freenove example, then improve it with a sine-harmonic timing table to create a realistic Cylon scanner effect. All code is written in Ada and runs on the RP2040 without floating-point at runtime.

In this chapter I combine a push button with an LED. We start with basic on/off control, then move to a toggle-style table lamp with software debounce.

After quick community help, I rewrote Chapter 1 to use light tasking on both RP2040 cores. No more manual timers – clean, precise dual-LED blinking with zero slippage.

Starting simple with LED blinking in Ada – internal LED, external LED with proper renaming, and a look at why Ravenscar looks so clean (even if it’s not quite ready for everyday use yet).