Book Image

Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers - Third Edition

By : Steven Lawrence Fernandes, Tim Cox
Book Image

Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers - Third Edition

By: Steven Lawrence Fernandes, Tim Cox

Overview of this book

Raspberry Pi 3 Cookbook for Python Programmers – Third Edition begins by guiding you through setting up Raspberry Pi 3, performing tasks using Python 3.6, and introducing the first steps to interface with electronics. As you work through each chapter, you will build your skills and apply them as you progress. You will learn how to build text classifiers, predict sentiments in words, develop applications using the popular Tkinter library, and create games by controlling graphics on your screen. You will harness the power of a built in graphics processor using Pi3D to generate your own high-quality 3D graphics and environments. You will understand how to connect Raspberry Pi’s hardware pins directly to control electronics, from switching on LEDs and responding to push buttons to driving motors and servos. Get to grips with monitoring sensors to gather real-life data, using it to control other devices, and viewing the results over the internet. You will apply what you have learned by creating your own Pi-Rover or Pi-Hexipod robots. You will also learn about sentiment analysis, face recognition techniques, and building neural network modules for optical character recognition. Finally, you will learn to build movie recommendations system on Raspberry Pi 3.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Controlling an LED


The hardware equivalent of hello world is an LED flash, which is a great test to ensure that everything is working and that you have wired it correctly. To make it a little more interesting, I've suggested using a red, blue, and green (RGB) LED, but feel free to use separate LEDs if that is all you have available.

Getting ready

You will need the following equipment:

  • 4 x DuPont female-to-male patch wires
  • Mini breadboard (170 tie points) or a larger one
  • RGB LED (common cathode)/3 standard LEDs (ideally red, green, and blue)
  • Breadboard wire (solid core)
  • 3 x 470 ohm resistors

Each of the preceding components shouldn't cost many dollars and can be reused for other projects afterwards. The breadboard is a particularly useful item that allows you to try out your own circuits without needing to solder them:

Diagrams of an RGB LED, a standard LED, and an RGB circuit

The following diagram shows the breadboard circuitry:

The wiring of an RGB LED/standard LEDs connected to the GPIO header

Note...