I have an off topic question. Funny enough I have like a dozen pic boards but haven't had a chance to play with them. I was reviewing the debug assembly for noscrypt and realized how much I missed writing firmware. 

Question: do you have experience with a full or "commercial grade" simulation tool for the pico? I don't think they have debugging hardware, iirc it's software only. I've never heard complaints, but hobbyists aren't usually aware of commercial debugging equipment and software suites that people like Microchip and TI offer for their MCUs. I want to be able to see state for every instruction. Microchip has a generic simulation tool for each MCU series, so it's not perfect but it's so nice and fast to build with.