Introduction
Raspberry Pi is one of the powerful device invented in this era. During my
school days and college days, all the automation circuits and hobby circuits
were developed either directly by soldering components in the generic
circuit board or by using a micro controllers like Arduino. The set up and
debug effort was more and the programming was limited to Arduino processing
language.
With the invention of Raspberry Pi, the possibilities are endless. It is a
mini computer with all the facilities of a desktop PC. Users can develop and
run any programs as they wish. The device also comes with options to connect
to several peripherals and extension circuit boards.
Here I will be explaining a very simple program, like the baby step towards
the world of automation using Raspberry Pi. We will use Raspberry Pi to
control an LED (Turn OFF and ON).
Requirements
- Raspberry Pi
- SD Card with Raspbian OS
- Bread Board
- Jumper wires
- LED (2 nos)
GPIO Pins in Raspberry Pi
A powerful feature of the Raspberry Pi is the row of GPIO (general-purpose
input/output) pins along the top edge of the board. Any of the GPIO pins can
be designated (in software) as an input or output pin and used for a wide
range of purposes. In this example, we are using a python program to control
the GPIO pins and turn ON/OFF LED.
Connection
Connect negative leg of both LED to PIN 6(Ground), one positive leg to PIN 8
and another positive LEG to PIN 10
Program
Raspbian OS will be having Thonny Python IDE by default, so it’s easy to write
and execute python codes in Raspberry Pi
Install the
RPi.GPIO package in the Raspberry Pi.
Copy paste the below program in the IDE. Make the connections between LED
and GPIO pins as explained in the previous step.
Execute the program. You will see the lights blinking.
