Hi,

that looks fantastic, thanks a lot. But shouldn’t it be

led = LED(17)

in the first code example?

Thanks,
Thomas

This is excellent, one less reason for the pi user to need sudo.

Next challenge is re-writing Gordon’s WiringPi to use the same techniques so that WiringPi programs don’t need to run with sudo to access GPIO pins.

What do
button.when_pressed = led.on
button.when_released = led.off
do? Do they bind an action for when the button is pressed/released later on? Or do they turn the led on/off then that line of code is running?

I like the simple interface but I miss a generic input/output class. Not every input is a button and not every output is a led. I’d suggest to rename the current implementation of LED and BUTTON to OUTPUT and INPUT and then assign LED=OUTPUT and BUTTON=INPUT

Regards
Aydan

I like where this is heading. Look forward to seeing how it develops. Keep up the good work

One less barrier to interfacing to the real world with the Raspberry Pi!

I have been running Jessie for a while. I have done sudo apt-get update and upgrade but I am getting an ImportError No module named gpiozero.

I have encountered issues in the past where I have initially installed sw using pip and I have later installed through apt-get. So I prefer the later.

Do I just need to be patient and wait for it to be installable using sudo apt-get install gpizero or will everyone need to use pip?

James

Another reason to learn Python! :)

Thanks for including the ADC, please include LCD and IO expander chips. That would give a big punch to the whole project.

BRILLIANT,
Any chance of doing for the MCP23017 what you did for the MCP3008

Could you use something a little less obscure than MCP3008 in the naming. What the heck is that? We are beginners here and I liked the comment about making the terms more indicative of the function. Then this…

red_pot = MCP3008(channel=0)

Otherwise, going in a good direction. Is there a Basic available for Pi? I am old school (very old!) I will search when I get a chance.

Sorry, but hiding the control flow seems like a bad idea. What’s the point of “led.red.source = red_pot.values” without understanding loops and conditional statements so one can move on beyond the simple “wiring in software” to match the hardware wiring? It might need a few less lines to have a button control an LED than its predecessor, but those lines weren’t hard to learn and taught something useful. GPIO Zero’s source is advanced Python too, e.g. metaclasses, so that’s more of an impediment to one’s exploration.

How do you create a python module?

Cool. I love adventure time. My favourite character is BMO.

Hi Ben, I’m new to Linux & Pi and I get the same issue as Schelto above:

pi@j-pi-1 ~ $ sudo apt-get install python3-gpiozero python-gpiozero
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package python3-gpiozero
E: Unable to locate package python-gpiozero

Apologies if this is a very noobie issue!

PS I should have mentioned that prior to running the install python3-gpiozero command I did also run:
sudo apt-get update

great work,
two queries,

– Can I use a camera here as a torch instead of the LED to flash, record ..etc
– Can I integrate a NOIR camera module here?

Regards
Singtel

I use windows for my Python scripting, so how would I install this on a windows system?

I am fairly new to all of this, so please bare with me. I am using your module to switch a relay on and off, basically by using the “LED” method. What strikes me as funny, is the fact that when I set the led to “ON”, it switches the relay off….and vice versa. Any particular reason why it would do that?

It’s so brilliant. I have been trying to program two interrupts with two different buttons, but the bounce_time parameter is not accepted in float.
What would be my error?

Here is the output:
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/gpiozero/pins/rpigpio.py”, line 199, in _set_when_changed
bouncetime=self._bounce)
TypeError: integer argument expected, got float

I’m wondering how well this works as an intro for beginners. In particular, how well does it work to help them “form a model” in their heads, so they can intelligently move forward. For example:

led.value = pot.value
led.source = pot.values

These look very similar, but they are doing unrelated things. Reduced to beginner concepts, the first one fetches and assigns on value, while the second “causes led to keep getting its values from pot until told otherwise”. Under the surface, it’s even more complex, with a thread updating led from pot.

My concern is that beginners might start out having fun, but not have much success in forming an internal model, such that they fairly soon “hit a wall” where the next level of understanding requires advanced Python skills. (Perhaps after the instructor has moved on, so they don’t hear about it).

But that’s just a guess. How well is this system working for teaching beginners, in your experience?

With the button, pressed means the pin is low, because it switches to ground. That is a bit counter-intuitive because pressed, or “on”, would normally mean high. Just like led.on() means high, and not low.

Are you planning on making a more generic input “device”? I would very much like to be able to do something like

if pin(12)==True:
# do something

for digital signals that are not buttons.

I came across the button bounce_time bug mentioned above, so I updated to the latest version (1.2.0), and it still doesn’t work properly, albeit without the error message.

from gpiozero import Button, Buzzer
from signal import pause

button = Button(25)
buzzer = Buzzer(22)
button.when_pressed = buzzer.on
button.when_released = buzzer.off
pause()

This works fine and as expected. But if you change the line to:

button = Button(25, bounce_time = 0.3)

Then when you press the button, the buzzer just goes on sounding forever.

If you then change ‘buzzer.on’ to ‘lambda: print(“button pressed”)’, it only works once, and seems to get stuck.

I can’t use the Button without a bounce_time, because then the callback usually gets called multiple times.

Has development on this stopped.

I am looking forward to seeing 16×2 LCD being integrated into this , but I see that further development has stopped.