LED exercise

[Sand319]

I only started programming on my Rpi this past week, I've never programmed before, and I'm making the most of my lockdown time by keeping my brain engaged.
I Have a Rpi Zero WH connected to a breadboard and 8 LED's (red, amber, green and blue)
Following guides etc I managed to get them to switch on and off, and modified the program myself so that alternate LED's switch on and off.

The project I have in mind requires the LED's to blink at differing speeds at the same time as some of the other LED's are on or blinking at a different speed. Eventually I want to have sound files playing along with the LED's (It's for a diorama that I am building).
As I said, I only started this past week, and have searched but am struggling to find an example of code that I could use/modify to allow me to do what I need to do.

Any help/pointers would be appreciated, I am using Thonny on the RPi to write the code.


Here's the code I have modified from the standard GPIO LED on/off script

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time
GPIO.setwarnings(False)
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(14,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(15,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(18,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(23,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(24,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(25,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(8,GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(7,GPIO.OUT)

while True:
    GPIO.output((((14, 23, 24, 7))), True) #red and green LED on
    time.sleep(.5)
    GPIO.output((((14, 23, 24, 7))), False) #red and green LED off
    time.sleep(.5)

    GPIO.output((((15, 18, 8, 25))), True) #amber and blue LED on
    time.sleep(.5)
    GPIO.output((((15, 18, 8, 25))), False) #amber and blue LED off
    time.sleep(.5)

[DPaul]

If you want to have "parallel" stuff going on, you might want to go via
a chip (shift register) with 8 gates. Costs almost nothing and is not that difficult to do.
Plenty of examples on the internet.
The ultimate challenge is to have 8 leds, and program them to show all the binary numbers
from 0 to 255. :-)
(And then have people guess in what order they blink)
Paul

[Sand319]

Thanks DPaul,

Yeah I do want to have parallel stuff going on, I am in process of building a Martian War Machine from the 1953 movie, I have a scene already created, just want a lighting and sound system to accompany it, I could just go and buy a kit from a company in the USA, but I thought it'd be more fun to build it myself using a RPi and learn to program in the process.
If you look up Martian War machine lighting and sound kit on Youtube you'll see what I'm hoping to achieve.

I get the process of lighting now, although it's only serial, I have a box full of components which no doubt wont contain a shift register, but you never know!

I still will need to understand the process of getting multiple led's blinking at different rates, I can't seem to find any info in that regard for me to look at and play with.

Thanks for your reply.

[DPaul]

Hi Sand319,

Look here:
http://www.multiwingspan.co.uk/micro.php?page=shift
Doing it in Python is no big deal.
Success,
Paul

[Sand319]

Awesome link, thanks very much!