MAKERFACTORY 15045 Advent Calendar for Raspberry Pi

Product Information

We have included a 50/50 split between blinky components and control components (we alternate each day) Fit the light sensor and the 10k resistor into the breadboard as we have below. The long leg of the light sensor needs to go to the left: Let's create an endless ( well, kind of!) counter to show another way of using these displays. When you come to make your own projects, things like this will be very useful. Resistors limit the amount of current that can pass through a circuit, which helps avoid the LED trying to pull more current than our Pico's GPIO pins can safely provide, and equally protects the LED from too much current. Search Engines are your best friend when it comes to making and coding. Forums, blogs, tutorials, social network user groups and more are at your fingertips and hold and endless amount of examples, code snippets, previous discussions and useful information.

Tip: If we didn't divide the sensor reading, we would be sending values from 0 to 65535 to our time delay (as seconds), which would be far too slow for the effect we're looking for.Each day you’ll learn how to make a new Pico project with your box's components via our daily online box guides ( published daily from 1st December) , with handy wiring diagrams and lots of code examples in MicroPython . Great for learning how to code or building up your selection of blinky components in a fun way! Easy to follow along We're going to use this sensor again before the end of the calendar as it's a great partner for a component hiding in one of the other boxes...

elif (targetscore/ 100 * 33) < scorecounter < (targetscore / 100 * 66): # If our score is between 33% and 66% of the target Warning: Some of today's activities contain flashing lights which may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy.The third line then finally sets that pin value to ‘1’ which is HIGH (on). 1 is always used for HIGH (on) and 0 is used for LOW (off). Welcome to day six of your 12 Projects of Codemas Advent Calendar. Today we’ll be using a light sensor which - you guessed it - can detect the amount of light around it and provide us with a reading value which we can use in our code. We'll also be learning some new functions in MicroPython to introduce some new elements to your code. The box includes three different colours to allow us to have some fun making light patterns. What is an LED?

Welcome to day two of your 12 Projects of Codemas Advent Calendar. Today we’ll be playing with one of the most popular components for makers - LEDs! With the first day’s box giving you a new pre-soldered Raspberry Pi Pico H, Micro-USB cable and a couple of breadboards, all you need is a compatible computer (with a full-size USB port) to plug it into - a Windows PC, Mac or Linux machine (sorry, Chromebooks are not suitable). Now try changing the 1 to a 0 - run the code again and it should turn the LED off. You can also try adding a print line at the bottom to show a message at the same time. Day #1 Complete! As always, keep your circuit safe somewhere until tomorrow ( don't take anything apart just yet ) and we'll see you again tomorrow for more fun!Our final example adds the % symbol after the reading. We do this by adding some parts to our print line.

Tip: If you see multiple options in the Port drop-down box, it just means you have other devices connected to your computer. If you’re not sure which one is the Pico, make a note of what COM ports are showing, disconnect the Pico from the USB port, close the Thonny options box, then try again. Whichever one is now missing was the Pico, so connect it again and select that device next time (it’s a lot easier than disconnecting everything else!) I2C requires just two wires to communicate (along with 3.3V and GND for our display) and has benefits over some other communication options - but we won't bore you with that just now as it's not going to be relevant until you're much further along on your maker journey. Let's wire the button next. Our button will need the usual 3.3V, not the 5V on the VBUS pin we're using for the LED strip:Next we add one of our buttons and the potentiometer. Fit them to the left of the Pico as shown below - remember that your potentiometer will have a gap between each of the legs unlike our diagram: Here's my plan. I am tired of shop-bought junk at Christmas and also my kids opening all the advent calender doors by the 2nd December. I know its August but I think Ill need 4 months to get this to work as I am a complete beginner to Python, Pi and anything clever.