Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#1

Post by gadgetoid » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

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

Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2
pico2.pinout.xyz

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#2

Post by djaychela » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 5:54 AM UTC

That's really good as all the pinouts give all the extras on which can be overwhelming. Being able to just see the PWM capable outputs for instance is much nicer. And they look fantastic.

Thanks for your pimoroni [1] work as well, I've used quite a few products and they're always easy to work with because of good software and examples.

[1] - https://shop.pimoroni.com/

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#3

Post by lawik » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 5:54 AM UTC

pinout.xyz is a treasure when working with Pis in general.

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#4

Post by mrheosuper » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 7:03 AM UTC

I wish many manufactures would begin adding Pin mux inside MCU, like espressif. So most of the time you don't care which pin has which function, and make designing pcb for it much less painful.

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#5

Post by iamflimflam1 » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 7:33 AM UTC

mrheosuper wrote: post #4

I wish many manufactures would begin adding Pin mux inside MCU, like espressif. So most of the time you don't care which pin has which function, and make designing pcb for it much less painful.

Definitely - the ESP32S3 is an absolute joy to work with and layout.

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#6

Post by moffkalast » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 8:18 AM UTC

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.

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#7

Post by ksdme9 » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 8:38 AM UTC

This looks awesome, thanks! The best thing about this imo is that I can remember the url instead of having to dig through pages to find the official pinout pdf.

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#8

Post by Zanfa » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 9:05 AM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #6

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 pi…

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.

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#9

Post by bajsejohannes » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 9:10 AM UTC

Thanks! I've been using pinout.xyz quite a few times; maybe you should link from there to the pico versions so it's easier to discover?

Re: Show HN: Interactive pinout for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2

#10

Post by bajsejohannes » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 9:12 AM UTC

Another version that's useful is this ASCII version: https://gabmus.org/posts/raspberry_pi_pico_pinout_in_your_te...

I keep a slightly modified version of it as a top comment in my main C file in every pico project. Super handy for quick reference and you can annotate it with the actual uses in your project.