Using APIO

The APIO project is a command line tool to fetch and use the oss-cad-suite FPGA toolchain based on Yosys.

It will bring an up-to-date build environment running quickly.

On Windows, you will first need to setup the libusbK driver for pico-ice DFU (CRAM) with Zadig or with UsbDriverTool (doc).

# Download the latest APIO dev version (with pico-ice support):
pip3 install git+https://github.com/FPGAwars/apio

# Download and install oss-cad-suite
apio install -a

# Build a new directory with a "blinky" example project inside
mkdir pico-ice-blinky; cd pico-ice-blinky
apio examples -f iCE40-UP5K/blink

# Set the board to "pico-ice"
apio init --sayyes --board pico-ice

# Build the project using yosys/nextpnr
apio build

# Plug your pico-ice board and upload the blinky project to it
apio upload

If apio upload fails, it is also possible to convert the .bin file to .uf2 with uf2-utils or uf2conv.py: doc.