Raspberry Pi Foundation comes with debug kit for Pico Pro and Arm microcontrollers

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a new module, the Raspberry Pi Debug Probe. The company describes the RP2040 microcontroller-equipped module as a complete, hardware-based debugging solution for Arm-based microcontrollers.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation writes For example, after the release of the Raspberry Pi Pico and the RP2040 microcontroller, customers are using one Pico to debug programs running on a different, second Pico. Alasdair Allan of the Raspberry Pi Foundation says that the combination of Picoprobe and a second Pico is a good solution for debugging, but that requires quite a bit of fiddling with cables. That is why he talks about a plug-and-play solution in the context of the Debug Probe.

The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe was designed with the Pico and the RP2040 in mind, but the module can be used to debug any Arm microcontroller that has a Serial Wire Debug port with 3V3 pins; these can be used to provide power for components that require little energy. The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe should act as a bridge between the USB and SWD protocols, allowing the host computer to access the target device’s debug port. Several cables are included for this.

The manufacturer sees the Debug Probe mainly as a useful tool for situations where there is no built-in debugger, for example if a program based on the C programming language runs directly on the processor without an operating system or if someone is writing an operating system. That’s where the Debug Probe comes in, as it requires a way to access the debugging capabilities built into the processor, says the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

There is no USB-C in the Debug Probe; micro-USB is present instead. According to the manufacturer, this was done to keep costs low; the module costs 12 dollars.