Coyote OS: Calculator Firmware for PicoCalc

PicoCalc
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I have been working on making a useful bit of software to run on the picocalc for my own usage. I came across a single file C99 library called tinyexpr, so I wrote a wrapper for it and made a bit of a UI, which allows the picocalc to be… well… a calculator.

The F1-F3 keys serve as buffers that allow you to do multiple calculations in different screens. F4 is the graphing mode. When in graphing mode, you can enter a function, varying in X, which will be plotted. You can press F6 to open a menu and add more functions to be plotted on top.

I also added a basic graphing mode, and a very, very basic text editor.

To access the text editor, press Shift + Tab. It will pop up a menu, select “text” and then you can use the scratchpad. The save/load/new functions are as described on the header.

I’m hoping to add more features as I think of them (and have the time to sit down and work on them) but in the meantime, enjoy!

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Thank you for this - I am really looking forward to trying it, as I am also looking for the PicoCalc to be a calculator! Would you be able to add the uf2 files to the git releases though? I followed the install steps, got the sdk, and got CMake, but was not able to get the cmake command working. Thank you very much.

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Adding a github action and a release tag has been something that is on my radar. I will prioritize it. After I do that you should be able to find the uf2 in the release section.

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Thank you very much Chuck!

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Uf2 files should be available on the releases tab of the github repo now.

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Thanks for the quick turn - the pico1 uf2 works for me! I am looking forward to trying this out.

Two more things (sorry) …

  1. will you be adding a “help” command? Or is there something like that already?
  2. I wonder if beep off ought to be the default?

Thank you again for this.

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This is a great calculator Thank you.

I’ve compiled it for the pico2 and it works very well with UF2 Loader. The reboot to bootloader by pressing F5 doesn’t support UF2 Loader but that’s not a big problem.

the following instructions will produce a pico2 coyote.uf2 file , it’s not too different from the pico1 instructions:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/laingcc/Picocalc-Coyote-OS.git
cd Picocalc-Coyote-OS
export PICO_SDK_PATH=/path/to/pico-sdk
cmake -DPICO_BOARD=pico2 -B build -S .
cd build
make -j8

my pico-sdk path looks like this as an example:

export PICO_SDK_PATH=~/code/pico/pico-sdk

Once it’s compiled the build directory will contain your coyote.uf2 file to load onto your Picocalc. I hope this helps someone as the github repository only contains the pico1 version of coyote.uf2 at the moment.

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I actually put a Pico2w in my picocalc just yesterday. I compiled it the same way that you did and I can confirm that it works. I’m planning on adding it to the github action so it should drop out both uf2s.

My longer term goal is going to be to make use of some of the wireless functionality, so I need to come up with a clean way of testing both the pico2 and pico1 versions… unless I just drop pico 1 support. The pico2 is significantly faster to evaluate expressions, and It’s also solved my light banding issue with the screen.

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If you had to choose between supporting the RP2040 and the RP2350 I myself’d choose to support the RP2350 even though it is a Pico 1H that comes out of the box with the PicoCalc simply because the RP2350 is an unequivocably superior chip now that The Bug has been fixed, and even with a pre-fix A2 stepping RP2350 in my PicoCalc I have never run into a practical situation where I have been affected by The Bug.