A new PDF guide has been published for installing the PicoFly modchip on all Switch console models by lightninjay who apparently took the trouble to collect all the information released to date.

 

This guide tends to go over the basics of configuring the PicoFly modchip while also reiterating how the hardware can be installed on ANY model Switch console (including unpatched V1 models) and that it can run on ANY firmware.

PicoFly is a modchip based on an RP2040 microcontroller which, if installed, will allow you to perform a glitch on the CPU, loading a payload before the Nintendo software bootloader.

 

 

Recommended materials

1. Nintendo Switch (V1, V2, Lite or OLED) ANY model.
2. Soldering station:
   • Preferably digitally controlled soldering iron so you know at what temperature you are soldering.
   • Soldering (some recommend low temp lead free flux solder to make some parts slightly easier).
   • Flux (This is NOT optional. When soldering at these scales, flux is absolutely vital to making good solder joints.) Applied with the tip of a wooden toothpick this is how I usually poke small dots.
   • A damp sponge and/or brass wire sponge to keep the soldering tip clean. I use both.
   • The tip used can be vital depending on the location of the solder points. I use a ts-100 iron and switch between three different tips:

3. A set of tweezers:
   • I know it sounds ridiculous, but trust me. Handling such small components REQUIRES fine point tweezers. You may be able to SEE components without a magnifying glass, but you won’t be able to manipulate and solder things like 0805 (or even smaller) resistors with your bare fingers.

On Amazon you can buy this set of 12 antistatic tweezers in stainless steel, non-magnetic and acid-resistant for just over 10 euros.

4. Welding wire:
   • It would seem like a no-brainer, but the type of cable that is used can ultimately make or break your setup. I used a mix of 30 awg Kynar and 40 awg magnet wire . I have seen installations with all 30awg and installations with all 40awg. Your luck may vary, but the smaller wire tends to be a little more forgiving of small components when soldering.
5. 0805 resistors from 47 ohms to 50 ohms.
   • These resistors are soldered to the PicoFly’s DAT0, CLK and CMD pins, then wires are soldered from the Switch console’s motherboard to the resistors. There are two types you can generally use: 470 and 47R0 The 470 type is 47 ohm +/-5% while the 47R0 is 47 ohm +/-1%. Other sizes than 0805 will work, but 0805 seems to be easier to fit on solder pins than the RP2040-Zero.
6. Mosfet or HWFLY flex cable appropriate for your Switch console:
   • If you’re solely using mosfets, we recommend purchasing the model IRFHS8342due to its size and ability to fit under the APU shield.
   • If you use a flex cable instead (with integrated mosfets), order a V1 cable for Erista models or a V2 cable for Mariko, Lite or OLED models (you can also use V3 OLED cables, it’s a choice of where the flex cable comes out of the APU shield).

7. A kind of magnifying glass:
   • There are many people who can get away with using a cell phone camera to zoom in and make sure the joints are not connected and good solder contact is being made. Others will say that you absolutely need a microscope to do this job so you can see all the tiny components on a well-lit screen as you work. It depends on what you are most comfortable with.

8. Kapton tape:
   • This seems to be negligible in some cases, but the kapton tape helps electrically insulate the PicoFly from accidentally shorting anything once it’s installed and closed.

9. Thermal Paste:
   • Another element often overlooked to improve the life of the Switch console after this mod. A good thermal paste applied correctly after cleaning all the old stuff is imperative in order not to overheat the console, which leads to the console shutting down in standby mode.

10. Last but not least an RP2040 development board:
    • This is partly where the community begins to divide, beyond what kind of Switch console is being modified. The vast majority of the community use the RP2040-Zero boards from Waveshare/Aliexpress, but thanks to Rehius, the developer of the firmware, several types of development boards are currently supported. I will try to list some of the most used ones so far. For this guide, I’m focusing on the RP2040-Zero.

IBest RP2040-Zero Mini Development Board…	Waveshare RP2040-One Mini Development Board…	Seeeduino XIAO RP2040	Adafruit ItsyBitsy M0 Express Onboard…
€11.95	€11.99	€14.95	€24.13
Buy on Amazon	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Amazon

 

 

Optional but highly recommended

11. UV Curing Solder Mask:
    • It cannot be understated how small these components are. Once the wires are faithfully in place, many would recommend applying a small amount of solder mask to hold things in place, as well as help insulate the connections from shorting.

Preparation of the PicoFly

Flashing the PicoFly, overview

At the heart of all development boards is a System on a Chip (SoC) known as the RP2040. It has its own built-in firmware flashing system which expects it to present itself to the computer as a USB drive.

If it has never been programmed before, simply plugging it into your computer should bring up a window with two files in it. This is the firmware flash window.

If you drag and drop a file .uf2into this window, the RP2040 will read the file and attempt to flash it. This will cause the window to close and the next time you plug in the RP2040, it will not show up as a USB drive to your PC.

To reprogram an RP2040 that has already been programmed, there is usually a “start” button that needs to be held down while connected to the USB, but when you do this and the window pops up, the firmware file will not appear in the window since it is NOT a storage device.

The RP2040 simply tricks your computer into treating it like a storage device. Some recommend using the file flash_nuke.uf2provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation among the flashes.

This basically just flashes all the zeros into the RP2040 firmware memory to ensure a clean flash of whatever you decide to put on it.

We want to flash our device with the most up-to-date PicoFly firmware from Rehius, available at:

https://github.com/Ansem-SoD/Picofly/tree/main/Firmwares

As of the current date (2023-04-11), the file fw_2.64.uf2is all that should appear on the development board.

With this file downloaded and the RP2040-Zero device connected to the PC, showing the firmware flash window, keep an eye on the RP2040-Zero device LED.

When you drop the file .uf2into the window, the LED should flash as the PC window closes. This is to indicate successful firmware flashing, but the color of this LED is what we are concerned with now.

If the LED flashes red once, GREAT, you don’t need to do anything special, however, if you see a single green flash, you need to permanently connect the RGB jumper with solder to the back of the RP2040, as shown below:

You can hold down the start button, reconnect the RP2040-Zero device to your computer, flash the file back .uf2to the card, and look for a flashing red LED now.

At this point, with a firmware loaded on the card, we can start preparing it to mount it in the Switch console.

Conventionally, people remove the USB-C port and Boot + Reset buttons. Below is an example of a finished installation with USB-C removed, buttons removed, resistors installed, and as you can see a mix of 30 awg Kynar (for power at RP2040-Zero) and about 36 awg of wire magnetic for the remaining wires.

During this phase of removing the doors, it is also recommended to add the three resistors to the side of the card. With the start button removed, some people place the resistors inside the board, rather than hanging by the edge.

If you are having slow EMMC problems after putting it all together, one possible reason is that you need two additional resistors, one each on CMD and DAT0, as below, totaling 94 ohms on each line:

There may also be other reasons for slow EMMC, such as residual flux on the solder points or wires that are too thin or too long on the CLK, CMD, or DAT0 pins.

On the same note, if you leave flux residue on RST points, the console may instantly reboot after boot, as RST points are very sensitive.

Now it’s time to open the console and get to work!

Console modification

There are many guides on Youtube on how to properly open the Switch console, so I’ll just refer to the following ones:

Once inside, you’ll need to refer to the following photos to solder the wires into the console:

V1/V2 points

Oled dots

In this video the youtuber Alien Retro Gaming positions his adapter and connects it to the Switch console:

L’ultima parte vede l’installazione dei mosfet o del cavo HWFLY. Tendenzialmente l’installazione è la stessa per tutti i modelli, la differenza principale è l’orientamento dei condensatori APU verticali dal modello V1 agli altri 3 modelli che posizionano i condensatori orizzontalmente.

Ecco una sezione di un video con l’installazione di uno di questi cavi:

Se non si ha accesso a un cavo e si sta eseguendo un’installazione mosfet nuda, ecco alcune foto per fare riferimento ai metodi più intelligenti in cui le persone hanno cablato le loro unità:

V1 Erista (condensatori verticali)

Mariko V2, Lite, OLED

Di seguito alcune foto per l’installazioni del mosfet:

Questa è un’installazione a mosfet singolo, in cui il condensatore sinistro di questa scheda V2 è stato rimosso, quindi il filo colpisce solo il pad destro del cappuccio sinistro:

And here’s a slightly more complex, but well-executed setup of dual mosfets that have been solder masked:

Also, importantly, if you were to accidentally remove one or more of these capacitors, it might still be fine, but to replace them, you can steal some from an RP2040-Zero, without affecting the function of the PicoFly. These 100nF capacitors are found here:

Once the mosfets are installed, make sure any new points are electrically isolated from the APU shield as they are re-inserted. Now simply solder all the flying leads to the appropriate points on the RP2040 device.

Before attempting to boot, make sure you haven’t accidentally plugged in extra contacts, as this could ruin the Switch console.

Once done, press the power button on the Switch console after reconnecting the battery. The PicoFly should flash blue (on first start up, it should flash white after blue) then green to indicate success!

If you see the lights in this exact order, try carefully turning the Switch console over and checking the screen to see it.

If you come across this screen, that’s what this guide brings you, as you’ve successfully modded your Switch console with PicoFly, congratulations!

At this point you can follow any number of HATS package guides to prepare an SD card for your device, but the gist is that it’s looking for a file payload.binlocated within the SD card.

As long as all the support files for that payload.binhave been copied to the SD card along with it, then everything should boot fine.

On the other hand, if you are not seeing Blue, White, then Green on the LED and the console boots to a black screen, or instead boots to OFW as usual, look at the following list of LED codes to diagnose potential problem:

If you get a Blue then Cyan color and you only have one mosfet installed, this could indicate that you need to install the second mosfet to get CPU level continuity issues.

Pink, purple, or orange are usually indicative of a bad solder joint somewhere, related to whatever color is flashing.

Hopefully you have managed to hack the Switch console by now and look forward to the next few hours to set up and tweak your setup!

PicoFly Toolbox

The file picofly_toolbox_0.2.bin(available on the Github where the firmware is downloaded from) is the current payload that can be loaded via the Hekate payload launcher, to interface with the PicoFly.

The caveat is that you must have at least v2.6 firmware to use the Toolbox as a feature. This means that if you have previously loaded your PicoFly with an outdated firmware, such as the frequently circulated “2.5 toshiba + unlock” version, you will need to flash at least 2.6 to your PicoFly via USB and a computer before you can interact with it. the PicoFly modchip using the Toolbox.

Once you’re running version 2.6, you can start the Toolbox from the main menu, which should look like this:

You can use the volume buttons to move up and down in the menu, then press the power button to select an option in the menu. If you press the power on the info option, you will be presented with a screen similar to the one below:

Note that I recreated these images in photo editing software, but this is what is currently displayed on my Switch console. I have flashed several updates so my fuse count is greater than 0 and I am currently on v2.64.

Update

To actually use the tool to update the PicoFly modchip from V2.6+ to something higher, simply place the .bindesired firmware update inside the SD card and rename it to update.bin.

Launch PicoFly Toolbox, then scroll down once to “Update” by pressing “Vol -” once, then press the power button once.

The toolbox will now look for the file update.binwhere it should be, and flash the firmware provided within the file. You will be prompted to restart and may experience slightly longer boot times for the first few boots after the update.

Rollback

PicoFly stores the latest firmware you flashed from, in case of a failed flash, it can automatically roll back to whatever version you were flashing from.

If in case you have successfully flashed to a higher version, but intentionally want to roll back to the previously running version, from the PicoFly Toolbox main menu, scroll down twice with the Vol – button pressed twice , then select Rollback with the power button. Similar to an update, you will be prompted to restart.

SD Loader

As I understand it, SD Loader is the part of Boot0 that is modified to load unsigned SD payloads (like our favorite custom bootloader, usually Hekate).

The “No SD Card” screen is part of this part of the SD loader. To back up or restore this part, simply use the two options displayed in the respective part of the menu, but you really shouldn’t mess with this unless instructed to do so.

Training Data Reset

As the name might suggest, this is for resetting the PicoFly’s training data in case the startup times have gone wrong for some reason.

This will erase your workout data and allow PicoFly to attempt to relearn new glitch timings for the Switch console. For the most part this shouldn’t be necessary, but it’s here if needed.

This guide has been provided to you by Lightninjay, a member of the GBATEMP forums, and does not engage them in any way for any harm that may occur to you or your devices while following this guide.

As a courtesy, here are some alternative card pinouts that PicoFly should be compatible with, thanks to forum member, Dee87, colors added by me.

The PDF guide for the preparation and installation of the PicoFly modchip (in English) can be downloaded from this address .

Source: gbatemp.net