PICO-Cam-A

RP2040
USB Type-C

Overview

PICO-Cam-A is a high-performance microcontroller development board designed by Waveshare, which has 1.14inch LCD, Cam camera, buttons and other peripherals on board in a small board size, and is equipped with some GPIO and Debug interfaces, which is convenient for users to develop and embed the application into products.

Features

RP2040 microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi
Dual-core ARM Cortex M0+ processor, flexible clock running up to 133 MHz
264KB of SRAM, and 16MB of onboard Flash memory
Type-C connector, keeps it up to date, easier to use
On-board HM01B0 grayscale camera
Onboard 1.14inch 240×135 pixels 65K colorful IPS LCD for clear color pictures
USB 1.1 with device and host support
Support low-power sleep and hibernation modes
Can be recognized as a large-capacity memory via USB for drag-and-drop download program
13 GPIO pins via 1.27mm pitch female header
2 × SPI, 2 × I2C, 2 × UART, 4 × 12-bit ADC, 13 × controllable PWM channel
Accurate clock and timer on-chip
Temperature sensor
Accelerated floating-point libraries on-chip
8 × Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support

Parameters

LCD Specifications
Controller	ST7789V	Resolution	135(H)RGB x 240(V)
Communication Interface	SPI	Display Dimensions	14.864（H）x 24.912（V）mm
Display Panel	IPS	Pixel Size	0.1101（H）x 0.1035（V）mm

Pinout

Dimensions

Get Started with Pico

Introduction

Raspberry Pi Pico

C/C++ Series

For C/C++, it is recommended to use Pico VS Code for development. This is a Microsoft Visual Studio Code extension designed to make it easier for you to create, develop, and debug projects for the Raspberry Pi Pico series development board. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced professional, this tool can help you confidently and easily develop Pico. Below we will introduce how to install and use the extension.

Official website tutorial: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pico-vscode-extension/
This tutorial is suitable for Raspberry Pi Pico, Pico2 and the RP2040 and RP2350 series development boards developed by Waveshare
The development environment defaults to Windows. For other environments, please refer to the official tutorial for installation

Install VSCode

First, click to download pico-vscode package, unzip and open the package, double-click to install VSCode

Note: If vscode is installed, check if the version is v1.87.0 or later

Install Extension

Click Extensions and select Install from VSIX
Select the package with the vsix suffix and click Install
Then vscode will automatically install raspberry-pi-pico and its dependency extensions, you can click Refresh to check the installation progress
The text in the right lower corner shows that the installation is complete. Close VSCode

Configure Extension

Open directory C:\Users\username and copy the entire .pico-sdk to that directory
The Copy is completed
Open vscode and configure the paths for the Raspberry Pi Pico extensions

Cmake Path:
${HOME}/.pico-sdk/cmake/v3.28.6/bin/cmake.exe

Git Path:
${HOME}/.pico-sdk/git/cmd/git.exe    

Ninja Path:
${HOME}/.pico-sdk/ninja/v1.12.1/ninja.exe

Python3 Path:
${HOME}/.pico-sdk/python/3.12.1/python.exe

New Project

The configuration is complete, create a new project, enter the project name, select the path, and click Create to create the project
To test the official example, you can click on the Example next to the project name to select
The project is created successfully
Select the SDK version
Select Yes for advanced configuration
Choose the cross-compilation chain, 13.2.Rel1 is applicable for ARM cores, RISCV.13.3 is applicable for RISCV cores. You can select either based on your requirements
Select default for CMake version (the path configured earlier)
Select default for Ninjaversion
Select the development board
Click Complie to compile
The uf2 format file is successfully compiled

Import Project

The Cmake file of the imported project cannot have Chinese (including comments), otherwise the import may fail
To import your own project, you need to add a line of code to the Cmake file to switch between pico and pico2 normally, otherwise even if pico2 is selected, the compiled firmware will still be suitable for pico

set(PICO_BOARD pico CACHE STRING "Board type")

Update Extension

The extension version in the offline package is 0.15.2, and you can also choose to update to the latest version after the installation is complete

Open-source Demo

Sample Demo

C Demo

Burn Firmware

Way 1: Hold down the BOOT key and connect to the computer, release the BOOT key, a removable disk will appear on the computer, copy the firmware library with suffix .uf2 into it.
Way 2: After connecting the computer, press the BOOT key and RESET key at the same time, release the RESET key and then release the BOOT key, the computer will appear a removable disk, copy the firmware library with the suffix .uf2 into it.

Code Analysis

Example Explanation
This example primarily involves capturing images through the camera and displaying them on a 1.14-inch LCD. The demo utilizes multi-core processing, with Core 1 responsible for acquiring image data and image processing, while Core 0 handles the image display.
Core 1 Code Explanation

Data Pushing
multicore_fifo_push_blocking() is a function provided by Pico SDK for pushing data to the FIFO (First In, First Out) queue of the multi-core system. Here, Core 1 will push the FLAG_VALUE to FIFO, and Core 0 will block to wait for the FLAG_VALUE data from Core 1 in the flow of execution.

multicore_fifo_push_blocking(FLAG_VALUE);

Wait for Data
Core 1 blocks and waits for the data from Core 0.

uint32_t ack = multicore_fifo_pop_blocking();

LCD Initialization
Call DEV_Module_Init() to initialize the pins and buttons related to the LCD, and call LCD_1IN14_V2_Init() to initialize the LCD.

DEV_Module_Init();
LCD_1IN14_V2_Init(HORIZONTAL);
LCD_1IN14_V2_Clear(BLACK);
UDOUBLE Imagesize = LCD_1IN14_V2_HEIGHT * LCD_1IN14_V2_WIDTH * 2;
UWORD *BlackImage;
if ((BlackImage = (UWORD *)malloc(Imagesize)) == NULL)
{
    printf("Failed to apply for black memory...\r\n");
    exit(0);
}

Display Image
Call Paint_DrawImage() to draw images, and call LCD_1IN14_V2_Display() to display the images on the LCD.

Paint_NewImage((UBYTE *)BlackImage, LCD_1IN14_V2.WIDTH, LCD_1IN14_V2.HEIGHT, 0, WHITE);
Paint_SetScale(65);
Paint_SetRotate(ROTATE_0);
Paint_DrawImage(gImage_waveshare, 0, 0, 240, 135);
LCD_1IN14_V2_Display(BlackImage);
DEV_Delay_ms(500);

Camera Initialization
This code segment calls cam_config_struct() to initialize the camera configuration structure "config" and then proceeds to initialize the camera by calling cam_init().

struct cam_config config;
cam_config_struct(&config);
cam_init(&config);

Image Processing
This code segment is a loop where the camera captures a frame in each iteration, processes the image, and ultimately stores the processed image data in "displayBuf". The "imageReady" flag is then set to 1, indicating that the image is ready for display.

while (true) {
    cam_capture_frame(&config);

    uint16_t index = 0;
    for (int y = 134; y > 0; y--) {
        for (int x = 0; x < 240; x++) {
            uint16_t c = image_buf[(y)*324+(x)];
            uint16_t imageRGB = (((c & 0xF8) << 8) | ((c & 0xFC) << 3) | ((c & 0xF8) >> 3));
            displayBuf[index++] = (uint16_t)(imageRGB >> 8) & 0xFF;
            displayBuf[index++] = (uint16_t)(imageRGB) & 0xFF;
        }
    }

    imageReady = 1;
}

Core 0 Code Explanation

Boot Core1
multicore_launch_core1 is the function provided by Pico SDK for booting Core 1 on the Raspberry Pi Pico. This code start Core 1 to execute the specified function through calling multicore_launch_core1().

multicore_launch_core1(core1_entry);

Wait for data
Core 0 blocks and waits for data from Core 1, if data FLAG_VALUE is successfully received then send data to Core 1.

uint32_t ack = multicore_fifo_pop_blocking();
if (ack != FLAG_VALUE)
    printf("Error: Core 0 failed to receive acknowledgment from core 1!\n");
else {
    multicore_fifo_push_blocking(FLAG_VALUE);
    printf("Success: Core 0 Received acknowledgment from core 1!\n");
}

Main Loop
Continuously checks the "imageReady" flag in the main loop. Once the flag is detected as 1, indicating that the image is ready for display, it calls LCD_1IN14_V2_Display() to show the image. After the display, it resets the "imageReady" flag to 0.

while (1) {
    if (imageReady == 1) {
        LCD_1IN14_V2_Display((uint16_t*)displayBuf);
        // Reset the imageReady flag after displaying the image
        imageReady = 0;
    }
    DEV_Delay_ms(1);
}

Run the Demo

Burn the firmware, and the PICO-Cam-A will display the boot interface after powering on, and then display the footage captured by the camera in real time.

Resource

Demo

Demo

Document

Schematic

Drawing

3D Drawing

Official Resources

Raspberry Pi Official Datasheet

Raspberry Pi Open-source Demo

Raspberry Pi Official C/C++ demo (GitHub)

Development Software

Support

Technical Support

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