TinyGCalc is a minimal, portable graphing calculator firmware designed for small embedded systems like the Raspberry Pi Pico. It emphasizes:
- Simplicity – just plot functions; no bloat
- Portability – easily retarget to new hardware
- Modularity – replaceable HAL for display/input/time
It builds cleanly for:
- Raspberry Pi Pico (via Pico SDK)
- Desktop mock display (SDL2)
- STM32 (planned)
- Lightweight: Works on chips with 128–256 KB RAM and 1–2 MB flash
- Pure C/C++: Simple to understand and debug
- Hardware-abstracted: Port by just swapping the HAL
- Buildable on Windows, Linux, macOS
Clone the repo and its submodules:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ApexDevelopment/TinyGCalc.git
cd TinyGCalcbuild.bat./build.shBy default, this builds the desktop mock platform using SDL2.
To build for a different platform, use:
build [platform]For example, to build a UF2 for the Raspberry Pi Pico W:
build picowPitfall: if you target a Pico board but you don't have
picotoolinstalled, it will be built from source. This may cause CMake to choke.
For more information on dependencies and environment configuration, see
BUILDING.md
TinyGCalc expects the Pico SDK to be installed globally. You can set the SDK location when running CMake:
cmake -DPICO_SDK_PATH=/path/to/pico-sdk ..If you haven’t installed it yet:
git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk.git ~/pico-sdkThen use:
cmake -DPICO_SDK_PATH=$HOME/pico-sdk ..Or set it globally in your shell:
export PICO_SDK_PATH=$HOME/pico-sdkTinyGCalc supports keyboard input when running on the mock platform with SDL2.
- Simply start typing to enter an expression. Press enter to evaluate it.
- F1 enters the equation editor. Use arrow keys to navigate and enter to plot all equations.
- While in graph view, use arrow keys to pan, mouse wheel to zoom, and enter to return to the editor.
- While in the editor, press escape to return to the REPL (expression evaluator).
More features are planned for the future.
This project is licensed under the ISC license.
It includes third-party code licensed under:
- zlib (TinyExpr, SDL2)
- BSD 3-Clause (Pico SDK)
- GNU GPL 3.0 (font6x8)