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Building IoT Machine Learning Applications using the Raspberry Pi Pico

Jacob Beningo- Watch Now - Duration: 02:00:06

Building IoT Machine Learning Applications using the Raspberry Pi Pico
Jacob Beningo

Machine Learning is finding its way into various microcontroller-based IoT devices. Unfortunately, embedded software developers typically aren’t experienced in machine learning, making designing these new device types challenging.

In this workshop, attendees will learn hands-on about machine learning using the inexpensive Raspberry Pi Pico. We will introduce machine learning concepts and how they affect embedded software developers. Attendees will then get the opportunity to collect their dataset, train, and deploy a machine-learning model to their Raspberry Pi Pico.

Topics covered in this session include:

  • Introduction to machine learning
  • A Raspberry Pi Pico overview
  • Hands-on data collection and model training
  • Model validation, testing, and deployment
  • Next steps

The hands-on portion is optional, but if you wish to participate, the following hardware will be required:

We will discuss several machine learning frameworks and tools, but the hands-on piece will use Edge Impulse Studio.

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dcomer
Score: 0 | 2 years ago | 1 reply

Jacob, I am posting this for other Mac users if they are unaware of the uf2 pico boot issue you experienced in the workshop. The Ventura release of macOS has a bug in finder that breaks the ability to copy a uf2 to the USB virtual drive created on the PICO when you press the BOOTSEL button and attempt to copy the .uf2 file to the virtual drive. You can, however,

  1. Unplug the pico,
  2. Press the BOOTSEL button while plugging back in the pico
  3. Open a terminal window and cd to the directory where your uf2 file exists (or use long path names).
  4. ls /Volumes/RPI-RP2 (to see the files on the virtual drive
  5. cp .uf2 to /Volumes/RPI-RP2
    example: cp blink.uf2 /Volumes/RPI-RP2
    This is a workaround suggested in a great description of the issue found at:
    https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-pico-has-a-problem-with-macs-using-macos-ventura/

The key advise in the above linked article is:
"“There are several workarounds that Raspberry Pi recommends for MacOS users. The first involves taking "the MacOS Finder out of the picture". Then users can copy the UF2 to the virtual volume without involving extended attributes and additional resource forks.”
DISCLAIMER:
Warning: Use at your own risk! This is a solution found on ZDNET.com. I have verified it on my Mac M1 by copying the file blink.uf2 from the raspberry pi pico SDK, and the led started blinking (where it was not before copying blink.uf2 to the virtual drive). I take no responsibility for any issues you may have using this solution. This comment is for informational purposes only and assumes you are a competent user of the macOS operating system.

Jacob_BeningoSpeaker
Score: 0 | 2 years ago | no reply

Thanks Dave! We appreciate you sharing this information. It's definitely something that other Mac users will encounter.

Dave also sent me a simple workaround. Just use the terminal:
cp .uf2 /Volumes/RPI-RP2
Jacob_BeningoSpeaker
Score: 0 | 2 years ago | no reply

Now open for questions