What is the Pico Debug’N’Dump?

The Pico Debug’N’Dump is a RPi Pico-based board designed by @ghidraninja used for hardware hacking. It makes use of the Pico capability to provide a flexible platform.

In particular, it comes with four different firmware programs

• Transparent UART bridge – This auto-adapts to any baud rate and displays the rate on a screen
• A SPI-flash read/er/writer compatible with flashrom/serprog
• An AirTag glitcher
• A fork of Picoprobe – which is a SWD programmer for OpenOCD

Plus you can write your own programs if you have the skills.

Hardware features

The Pico Debug’N’Dump adds the following hardware features as an add-on to an RPi Pico:

• A display
• Switch selectable voltage (1.8V, 3.3V, 5V)
• Power Supply On/Off
• 12C/SWD enable/disable
• Glitcher
• Sockets and connectors
• A Reset switch

Compiling the software

Unfortunately, the pre-compiled firmware isn’t included. You have to build your own. The process isn’t well documented. I did it once, and when I went back months later, I had to re-learn the steps. These are the notes I took.

Make sure you have an up-to-date version of Cmake. If you try to build the software using a version earlier than 3.13 you will get a warning. If your OS doesn’t have it available (i.e. Ubuntu 18.04) get it from the CMake site. There is even a apt-repository.

Download the git repository. Normally a simple git clone will work. However, there are submodules that you needed. You can install them manually, but there is a better way if you have a github account.

You need to make sure you have a ssh key generated and installed in github

If you don’t do this step, you will get the error

git clone <url-to-repository>
git submodule update --init --recursive
Cloning into '<repository>/pdnd'...
[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

If you don’t have a github account you have to download and install ghidranija’s pdnd-lib repository. Then you have to build it and copy it into your other repositories. Or you can get a github account and install your public key. After your github account is set up, execute the following

git clone <url-to-repository>
git submodule init --recursive
gig submodule update --recursive

Normally, the next steps are as follows

git clone <url-to-espository>
cd <git directory>
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

However, you will likely get the error

Make Error at pico_sdk_import.cmake:44 (message):
  SDK location was not specified.  Please set PICO_SDK_PATH or set
  PICO_SDK_FETCH_FROM_GIT to on to fetch from git.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMakeLists.txt:4 (include)


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

There are a couple of problems. First of all, we’re missing the PICO sdk.

Let’s install the Pico SDK to fix this problem.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk.git

This will take a while. Stretch your legs. Have a cup of coffee or tea.

If you don’t use the –recurse-submodules, you will have to add the tinyUSB modules. Next – build the SDK using the standard cmake steps:

cd pico-sdk
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

As you do this, you will see a messages such as

PICO_SDK_PATH is /home/user/Git/pico-sdk

Remember this for later. Now to build one of the firmwares for your Pico Debug’N’Dump, go to the git directory you downloaded and type

export PICO_SDK_PATH=/home/user/Git/pico-sdk # or whatever the value is
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

At this point you should have a file with the extension *.uf2

Hold down the BOOTSEL button and plug your board into to computer.

Drag the *.uf2 file onto your /media/user/RPI-RP2 partition. Then hit the reset button on the board and you should be ready to use it

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