How to update Picofly firmware

Updating the Picofly firmware has been made easy with the Picofly Toolbox. Picofly Toolbox requires Picofly firmware 2.60 or newer. Both the Picofly firmware and Toolbox was developed by rehius.

Notes

• No card reader: Remember you can and should copy files to the micro SD card without removing it from the Switch. See here for multiple options.

• FW 2.60 required: Picofly Toolbox requires Picofly firmware 2.60 or newer.

• Picofly Toolbox features:

  • Show firmware information
  • Update firmware from SD card (place update.bin into the root folder)
  • Rollback to the backup firmware slot
  • Reset learning statistics
  • Dump / write sdloader

Updating firmware steps

You need

• Hekate - Find Hekate's latest GitHub release here. (If you don't already have Hekate, consider following a CFW setup guide here)
• Picofly Toolbox - Get the picofly_toolbox_0.2.bin here
• Picofly Firmware - Get the latest Picofly firmware update.bin file here
  • The latest version was 2.80 when this was written

Steps

1. Copy update.bin to the root of the micro SD card
2. Copy picofly_toolbox_0.2.bin to /bootloader/payloads/ on your micro SD card
3. Start Hekate and press Payloads on the home menu and choose picofly_toolbox_0.2.bin
4. Use volume buttons to navigate menus and select Update.
5. The updating process uses the update.bin file and should take 1-2 seconds.
6. Press any button once it's done, and select Power off
7. Turn on the Switch again. This first boot after updating can be slow
   • The first few boots after updating can be slower than before updating. This is normal as the Picofly is re-training and will boot faster when it has more training data.

LED pattern diagnostics

• As of firmware 2.70 the debug LED color and codes have changed.
  • Now it's only 3 colors: Blue while glitching, white while flashing, and yellow for error codes. This was made to make possible pi pico debugging + get rid of RGB/GRB issues // - = is a long pulse and * is a short pulse

LED codes

= is a long pulse and * is a short pulse

= USB flashing done
* Successful glitch

** RST is not connected
*= CMD is not connected
=* D0 is not connected
== CLK is not connected
 
=** eMMC init failure during glitch process
=*= CPU never reach BCT check, should not happen
==* CPU always reach BCT check (no glitch reaction, check mosfet)
=== Glitch attempt limit reached, cannot glitch

=*** eMMC init failure
=**= eMMC write failure - comparison failed
=*=* eMMC write failure - write failed
=*== eMMC test failure - read failed
==** eMMC read failed during firmware update
==*= BCT copy failed - write failure
===* BCT copy failed - comparison failure
==== BCT copy failed - read failure

Troubleshooting

• Rollback; In the event of a failed update

  • The PicoFly stores the firmware you were using when updating (flashing), and if the update failed it can auto-rollback.
    
  • If for some reason you want to go back to the firmware you had before updating; Start Picofly Toolbox, scroll down and select Rollback. Just like with updating shut down and turn on the Switch again to finish the process.

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• Black/blue scren on normal boot

  • Reboot to OFW from Hekate, and booting normally by holding both volume buttons lead to a black/blue screen
  • Picofly firmware v2.5 had a bug with BOOT0 corruption. To recover it:
    1. Flash a newer Picofly fw if you have not yet done so
    2. Boot "Stock" using Hekate (See this page if you need to add a launch option)
    3. Update to the latest Switch firmware the normal way over WiFi

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