The initial exercises learning the power of the RaspPi

For the first circuit you need:

• Led (Long leg connects to power, short leg to GND)
• Resistor (placed before the power in the circuit)
• Raspberry PI Pico, using 3V3(power) and GND

OBS: on the picture we are using an Arduino, when using a Raspberry PI Pico, the pinmap is different, see the pinmap for Raspberry Pi Pico below.

For the second circuit you need:

• Led (Long leg connects to power, short leg to GND)
• Photoresistor (replacing the resistor you had before)
• Raspberry PI Pico, using 3V3(power) and GND

Try to put your finger on the photoresistor and see how the LED reacts.

Try using the light on our phone to light on the photoresistor and see how the LED reacts.

When the led is controlled by how much/little light you give the photoresistor, the first step is done.

Now we need to make two circuits and instead of using the power output, we will use a pin on the Raspberry Pi pico where we can use the input from the photoresistor and use it for the led as an output. The goal is that the photoresistor input, controls the light on the led.

When we are using the photoresistor we need to use an ADC pin.

Read more about what it means to use an ADC pin in the powerpoints below:

The code for the circuit:

from machine import ADC, Pin
import time

# brug photoresistor som input ...
# først definerer vi den pågældende pin (her pin 26) 
ldr = machine.ADC(26)

#brug LED som output (her pin 27) 
pin = Pin(27, mode=Pin.OUT) 


#denne kode gør at vi får en LDR (photoresistor) værdi i konsollen
#samtidig lader vi LED'en blinke i et tidsinterval
for i in range(100):

    # spørg efter LDR-værdien
    ldr_value = ldr.read_u16()
    print(ldr_value)  
    
    pin.value(1)
    time.sleep (0.5)
    pin.value(0)
    time.sleep (0.5)

What the setup should look like when testing the matrix:

Code for using the matrix:

from machine import ADC, Pin
import time

# ROWS
R1 = 18
R2 = 17
R3 = 19
R4 = 16
R5 = 14
R6 = 26
R7 = 15
R8 = 13

#COLUMNS
C1 = 12
C2 = 20
C3 = 21
C4 = 11
C5 = 22
C6 = 10
C7 = 9
C8 = 8


ldr = machine.ADC(27)

pin_r1 = Pin(R1, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r2 = Pin(R2, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r3 = Pin(R3, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r4 = Pin(R4, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r5 = Pin(R5, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r6 = Pin(R6, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r7 = Pin(R7, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_r8 = Pin(R8, mode=Pin.OUT)

pin_c1 = Pin(C1, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c2 = Pin(C2, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c3 = Pin(C3, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c4 = Pin(C4, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c5 = Pin(C5, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c6 = Pin(C6, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c7 = Pin(C7, mode=Pin.OUT)
pin_c8 = Pin(C8, mode=Pin.OUT)


rows = [pin_r1, pin_r2, pin_r3, pin_r4, pin_r5, pin_r6, pin_r7, pin_r8]
cols = [pin_c1, pin_c2, pin_c3, pin_c4, pin_c5, pin_c6, pin_c7, pin_c8]


def light_all():
    for p in rows:
        p.value(1)

    for p in cols:
        p.value(0)
        
def turn_off_all():
    for p in rows:
        p.value(0)

    for p in cols:
        p.value(0)

turn_off_all()

row = 0


ldr_vals = []

def run_rows():

    turn_off_all()
    time.sleep(1)

    for i in range(len(cols)):
        
        print(f'Turning on: cols[{i}]')
        
        cols[i].value(0)
        turn_off_all()
        rows[i].value(1)
        
        print(f'Reading LDR values: {ldr.read_u16()}')
        
        ldr_val = ldr.read_u16()
        ldr_vals.append(ldr_val)
        
        time.sleep(1)
        
    turn_off_all()
    

turn_off_all()


for i in range(len(rows)):    
    for j in range(len(cols)):

        for r in rows:
            r.value(0)
            
        rows[i].value(1)

        for c in cols:
            c.value(1)

        cols[j].value(0)
        ldr_val = ldr.read_u16()
        print(ldr_val)
        ldr_vals.append(ldr_val)
        time.sleep(0.5)
        cols[j].value(1)

        time.sleep(0.5)

arrs = []

for i, c in enumerate(ldr_vals):
    if i % 8 == 0:
        arrs.append(ldr_vals[i:i+8])
        
#print('Contents of ldr_vals[]: ', ldr_vals)
print(arrs)
print('Number of values: ', len(ldr_vals))

From this code you will get a string of 64 datapoints. Use those datapoints in Jupiter notebook: https://jupyter.org/try-jupyter/retro/notebooks/?path=notebooks/Intro.ipynb

Pasting like this code, but replacing with your datapoints

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

data = [[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], 
        [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16], 
        [17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24], 
        [25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32], 
        [33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40], 
        [41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48], 
        [49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56], 
        [57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64]] 

plt.imshow(data)
plt.imshow(data, cmap = 'Greys', alpha = 0.8, interpolation = 'bilinear')
plt.imshow(data, cmap = 'Greys', norm=LogNorm(), interpolation = 'bilinear')
plt.show()

And you will get a result like this:

For the next step in the project we want to gather all of the devices that we are working with in a box, that should work as a box for the camera. The box is working as a black room so the photoresistor is only detecting the light from the LED matrix, and not from anything else that could affect our results.

This is a video showing how the black box camera that we made works.

It is important to note that the participants of the workshop was at very different levels, meaning that some of them got to iterate more times on the projects than others, and therefor there is not one definite answer to how the final project should look.

The most important is that the students got to be creative and work on the level suited for them. See pictures below to see what some of the participants came up with.