Seting Up the Project
Let’s create a new project with Pico W Template:
cargo generate --git https://github.com/ImplFerris/pico-w-template.git --tag v0.1.1
This template includes the boilerplate code required to connect the Pico W to a Wi-Fi network. We will build our web server on top of it.
We will now start modifying our project. The implementation will be based on the set_pico_w_led example from the picoserve project.
Additional Crates
Add the following crates to your Cargo.toml file:
picoserve = { version = "0.19.0", features = ["embassy"] }
embassy-sync = "0.8.0"
As we mentioned earlier, picoserve is the main crate that will handle incoming web requests. The embassy-sync provides synchronization primitives that work with Embassy’s asynchronous runtime.
Nightly Rust
So far, we have been using the stable Rust toolchain. For this chapter, however, we need to switch to a nightly toolchain because the current version of picoserve depends on an experimental Rust language feature that is not yet available on stable Rust.
Create a rust-toolchain.toml file in the project root and add the following lines:
[toolchain]
targets = ["thumbv6m-none-eabi"]
channel = "nightly-2026-04-14"
Next, add the following line to the top of your main.rs file to enable the required feature:
#![allow(unused)]
#![feature(impl_trait_in_assoc_type)]
fn main() {
}Server Module
Create a new file named server.rs inside the src folder. We will place all the web server code in this file to keep main.rs clean.
Next, add the following line to main.rs:
#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
mod server;
}Web Files
Our web server serves three static files: index.html, index.css, and index.js. Download these files from the following links and place them inside the src folder, alongside main.rs and server.rs.
Your project structure should now look like this:
src
├── index.css
├── index.html
├── index.js
├── main.rs
├── server.rs
└── wifi.rs
The HTML file defines a simple web page with two buttons to control the onboard LED. When a button is clicked, the JavaScript sends an HTTP request to our Pico W to turn the LED on or off. The CSS file simply styles the web page to make it look better.