Scratch GPIO – PiGlow Support

Controlling a Pimoroni PiGlow using ScratchGPIO

This is a little fun add on from the Pimoroni gang www.pimoroni.com with 18 high brightness LEDs on it. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jJ349CX2IY]

To get an add-on like this to work on a Raspberry Pi (it uses what’s called the I2C protocol)  you need to run a few little things using LX Terminal.

sudo apt-get install i2c-tools

and

sudo apt-get install python-smbus

and finally a little tool to enable the I2C pins to be used for this purpose

wget https://github.com/heeed/pi2c/raw/master/pi2c.sh

followed by

sudo bash pi2c.sh

Then once you’ve rebooted – come back here 🙂

Make sure you’ve installed ScratchGPIO of course

PiGlowAddonOnce you’ve added I2C support to your Raspberry Pi then just create a variable called AddOn and set it to PiGlow as the first line in your Green Flag event.

You can then create variables Led1 to Led18 and set them to values between 0 (for off) to 255 (Fully on). You can also have variables for Red,Orange,Yellow,Green,Blue and White to refer to each of the colours and the the same for Leg1, Leg2 and Leg3.

PiGlowLegAs usual, you can use also use simple broadcasts instead of creating variables and say things like Broadcast Led1On to switch LED1 on

This script shows a how using the the join statement you can blink each leg in turn without having to use a lot of if statements.

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22 Responses

  1. For info – there’s a dead link here:
    “Make sure you’ve installed ScratchGPIO of course”

  2. heamogoblin says:

    Hi Simon tried emailing you, was wondering if you got it? didn’t hear back from you
    James

  3. A Bryant says:

    Thanks for all the hard work.

  4. madwoollything says:

    I’ve very carefully followed the instructions given above (following the links to other pages and checking there are no error messages on each install) hoping the get the PiGlow working for my daughter to play with.

    Unfortunately the PiGlow has still not come to life and I wondering how else I can troubleshoot the system.

    Any help would be much appreciated.
    Thanks

  5. That line should read
    sudo bash pi2c.sh
    surely?

  6. Alex says:

    I cant get the pi glow working with Python,but no luck using ScratchGPIO4 or 4plus. I have followed you instructions to the letter. Any help would be appreciated.

  7. tyrower says:

    Thanks Simon. Great job.
    It was something fun for me to switch on and off the PiGlow LEDs with Python. But it’s even better with Scratch! Looking forward to showing my son this.
    Keep up the good work. Valuable resources!
    Alan.

  8. Den says:

    Nice one, got this working last night. It’s great you have put this into Scratch, I am looking forward to combining the real world with some Sprites moving onscreen.

    Just not got it fully mastered yet.

    I have managed to adjust the brightness with Python, and select all the LED each color, but can’t seem to work out how to do that with Scratch. I have the each Leg, and numbered LED working ok.

    If anybody could point me to more examples that would be great.

    • cymplecy says:

      I” try and add more info in the docs but basically broadcast Red On should turn on all red leds. Create a variable called bright and chamge its value to adjust brightness

      • Den says:

        Ok, great I will try that. Cheers. ( I am a bit of newbie so need some hand holding, hoped to run through this with my daughter. )

  1. 6th September 2013

    […] Simon “Cymplecy” Walters has added Scratch support […]

  2. 7th September 2013

    […] Simon “Cymplecy” Walters has added Scratch support […]

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