The Pico W’s “native” languages are MicroPython and the C/C++ SDK — that’s what Raspberry Pi’s own getting-started guide walks you through. But a lot of kits built around the Pico W, including the Freenove Mecanum Wheel Car Kit I used for this, ship their example code for the Arduino IDE instead. That’s a genuinely different setup process, with one step in particular that trips people up because it doesn’t work the way it does on every other Arduino-compatible board.

A Raspberry Pi Pico W with soldered header pins

A Raspberry Pi Pico W with soldered header pins. Photo: Spageektti, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized)

Install the Pico board core

The Pico W isn’t an official Arduino board, so the IDE doesn’t know about it out of the box. Add the community-maintained core that does:

  1. Open File → Preferences
  2. Next to “Additional Boards Manager URLs,” add: 
    https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico/releases/download/global/package_rp2040_index.json
  3. Click OK, then go to Tools → Board → Boards Manager, search “pico,” and install the Raspberry Pi Pico/RP2040 package

This is Earle Philhower’s community core, not the smaller official Arduino Mbed OS RP2040 core that also shows up in board searches — it’s the one most kit manufacturers, Freenove included, build their example code against, because it supports a much wider range of libraries. If a kit’s example sketches throw missing-library errors, check which core is actually selected before troubleshooting anything else.

Select the right board

Tools → Board → Raspberry Pi Pico/RP2040 → Raspberry Pi Pico W — specifically the W variant, not plain “Raspberry Pi Pico,” and not “Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W” if you’ve got the original RP2040-based board rather than the newer RP2350 one. Picking the non-W board compiles fine right up until your sketch calls anything from WiFi.h, at which point it fails — an easy mistake to make since the two entries sit right next to each other in the list.

The first upload needs BOOTSEL mode — every subsequent one doesn’t

This is the step that catches people who’ve set up an Arduino or ESP32 board before and expect uploading to just work the same way. A brand new Pico W has no Arduino-compatible bootloader running yet, so there’s nothing listening on a serial port for the IDE to reset and upload to — the very first upload has to go in through the chip’s built-in ROM bootloader instead:

  1. Unplug the Pico W, then hold down the BOOTSEL button while plugging the USB cable back in. Timing matters — hold it through the reconnection, not just before.
  2. The board mounts as a USB mass-storage drive. Open File → Examples → 01.Basics → Blink, set Tools → Port → UF2 Board, and upload.
  3. Once that upload finishes, the board reboots running actual Arduino firmware and shows up as a normal serial port from then on. Switch Tools → Port to that COM/tty port for every upload after this one.

Freenove’s own documentation flags this explicitly, and it’s worth repeating: after the first upload, check the port is set correctly before every subsequent upload — it’s easy to leave it on “UF2 Board” from the first attempt, and the upload will simply fail rather than telling you why.

Kit-specific libraries usually aren’t in the Library Manager

If you’re following the Freenove Mecanum kit specifically, its servo control code depends on the RP2040_PWM library, which comes bundled in the kit’s own files rather than being searchable through Arduino’s Library Manager. Install it via Sketch → Include Library → Add .ZIP Library, then point it at RP2040_PWM-main.zip from the kit’s Libraries folder. This is a common pattern with hobby kits generally — manufacturer-bundled or modified libraries usually need a manual ZIP install rather than a Library Manager search, so if a kit’s example code references a library you can’t find by searching, check the kit’s own downloads folder before assuming something’s missing.

Double check the URL saved correctly in Preferences — if you already had another board’s URL in that field, entries need to be comma-separated, and a stray line break or missing comma will silently mean neither URL loads. Reopening Preferences after saving is the easiest way to confirm what’s actually stored there.