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Jakub Heger edited this page Oct 14, 2026 · 14 revisions

Reference

Keyboard shortcuts

Keys Action
Ctrl+P Probe
Ctrl+R Read
Ctrl+V Verify
Ctrl+E Erase
Ctrl+W Write
Enter Run batch (production mode)
Esc Stop
Alt+1 to Alt+4 Select socket CS0 to CS3
Alt+A Select ALL (broadcast)
Ctrl+L Clear the log
Ctrl+C (also Ctrl+Shift+C, Ctrl+Insert) In the log: copy the selected text
Ctrl+A In the log: select everything
Right-click In the log: Copy, Copy all, Select all
Ctrl+Q Quit

Shortcuts are ignored while you're typing in a text field (for example the port box), so Ctrl+V still pastes there. Click anywhere outside the field to use them again.

Files

What Linux / macOS Windows
Settings ~/.config/hydra_flasher.json ~/.hydra_flasher.json
Flash log ~/.local/share/hydra-flasher/flash_log.csv %APPDATA%\HydraFlasher\flash_log.csv
Instance lock ~/.local/share/hydra-flasher/hydra_flasher.lock %APPDATA%\HydraFlasher\hydra_flasher.lock

The settings file remembers:

  • the port, the speed and the selected socket;
  • the toggles: force, progress, skip verify, verify on Pico, used blocks only and one-by-one;
  • the light or dark theme;
  • the flashprog path, the last folder and the recent files;
  • the chip names learned from probes.

The chip override and production mode are not remembered; they start as Auto-detect and off.

Status LEDs on the Pico

LED (GPIO) Meaning
Orange (GP11) A job is running
Green (GP12) The last job succeeded
Red (GP13) The last job failed
All off Idle

Pinout

Signal Pico GPIO
SCK GP2
MOSI GP3
MISO GP4 (pull-up)
CS0 to CS5 GP5 to GP10 (the app uses CS0 to CS3)
CS6 Not a pin: broadcast, selects all CS lines at once
LEDs GP11 / GP12 / GP13

Under the hood

  • Probe, read, erase, write and flashprog verify run the flashprog command; the socket is selected with the serprog option cs=<n>.
  • The live scan, verify on Pico, the blank check and the LEDs talk to the Pico directly over the same serial port, using custom serprog commands (0x20 LED, 0x21 reboot to bootloader, 0x22 CRC32). HydraFlasher makes sure only one of the two uses the port at any moment.
  • If the firmware doesn't support the CRC32 command, or the port needs sudo, verify on Pico and used blocks only quietly fall back to plain flashprog.

HydraFlasher

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