Pico W & Inky Frame

FrameOS also runs on the Raspberry Pi Pico W (RP2040) and Pico 2 W (RP2350) - most usefully on the Pimoroni Inky Frame, which carries a Pico on the back of the panel and is otherwise a lovely piece of hardware with nowhere to run.

Supported boards

A bare Pico W or Pico 2 W wired to a supported panel works too - set the pins and the panel on the serial console instead of picking a preset.

Flash it

The Pico firmware is a plain UF2, the same for every board of a given chip - the backend does not build per-frame images for it.

1. Download frameos-<version>-pico-w.uf2 (or -pico-2w.uf2) from the latest release.

2. Hold BOOTSEL while plugging the board into USB, then copy the .uf2 onto the RPI-RP2 (or RP2350) drive that appears. The board reboots into FrameOS.

3. In the backend, add a frame with Flash embedded device and pick your Inky Frame preset. Note the frame's id and API key from its settings.

4. Open the USB serial console at 115200 baud and provision it:

   frameos> set hardware pimoroni_inky_frame_5_7
   frameos> set backend http://192.168.1.10:8989
   frameos> set frame_id 42
   frameos> set api_key <the frame's server API key>
   frameos> wifi MySSID MyPassword          # saves and reboots
   frameos> status
   frameos> render                          # fetch and refresh now

https:// backends work: TLS 1.2 with hostname verification against a built-in bundle of the major public CA roots.

Battery mode

set deep_sleep 1 powers the board off completely after each render, using the Inky Frame's onboard RTC and power latch - around 20 µA between refreshes. It cold-boots on the next interval, or when someone presses a front button. On USB power the latch can't cut the supply, so the firmware sleeps in place instead; the behaviour is the same either way.

Limitations

The Pico support is newer than the rest and honest about it:

• The backend must be up when the frame renders. No backend, no picture. If you want a frame that renders standalone, use a Pi or an ESP32-S3.
• Front buttons trigger an immediate render, but per-button scene actions aren't wired up yet.
• No on-device scenes, JavaScript, assets or scheduler - all of that happens on the backend side for a thin client.
• The 4.0" Inky Frame's panel initialisation still wants validation on real glass; if yours comes up mirrored or offset, tell us.

Details and build instructions live in the Pico firmware README.