Raspberry Pi is an ARM architecture processor based board designed for electronic engineers and hobbyists. The PI is one of most trusted project development platforms out there now. With higher processor speed and 1 GB RAM, the PI can be used for many high profile projects like Image processing and Internet of Things.
For doing any of high profile projects, one need to understand the basic functions of PI. That is why we are here, we will be teaching all the basic functionalities of Raspberry Pi in these tutorials. In each tutorial series we will discuss one of functions of PI. By the end of tutorial series you will be able to do high profile projects by yourself. Check these for Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi Configuration.
In this tutorial of PI series, we will understand the concept of writing and executing programs on PYTHON. We will start with Blink LED using Raspberry Pi. Blinky is done by connecting an LED to one of GPIO pins of PI and turning it ON and OFF.
As shown in above figure, there are 40output pins for the PI. But when you look at the second figure, you can see not all 40 pin out can be programmed to our use. These are only 26 GPIO pins which can be programmed. These pins go from GPIO2 to GPIO27.
These 26 GPIO pins can be programmed as per need. Some of these pins also perform some special functions, we will discuss about that later. With special GPIO put aside, we have 17 GPIO remaining (Light green Cirl).
Each of these 17 GPIO pins can deliver a maximum of 15mA current. And the sum of currents from all GPIO cannot exceed 50mA. So we can draw a maximum of 3mA in average from each of these GPIO pins. So one should not tamper with these things unless you know what you are doing.
Components Required:
Here we are using Raspberry Pi 2 Model B with Raspbian Jessie OS. All the basic Hardware and Software requirements are previously discussed, you can look it up in the Raspberry Pi Introduction, other than that we need:
- Connecting pins
- 220Ω or 1KΩresistor
- LED
- Bread Board
Circuit Explanation:
For more detail: LED Blinking with Raspberry Pi and Python Program
