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App Inventor + Iot: Control RGB Led With Micro:Bit I/O Pins: Level: Advanced

This tutorial teaches how to control an RGB LED connected to a micro:bit microcontroller using App Inventor by pairing the devices via Bluetooth, building an app interface with buttons to set the LED color, and using blocks code to call procedures that write to the microbit's pins to control the LED color. The user would install the app, connect their device to the microbit, then press buttons on the app to light the RGB LED in different colors like red, green, blue or white.

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Thanh Pham Minh
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173 views

App Inventor + Iot: Control RGB Led With Micro:Bit I/O Pins: Level: Advanced

This tutorial teaches how to control an RGB LED connected to a micro:bit microcontroller using App Inventor by pairing the devices via Bluetooth, building an app interface with buttons to set the LED color, and using blocks code to call procedures that write to the microbit's pins to control the LED color. The user would install the app, connect their device to the microbit, then press buttons on the app to light the RGB LED in different colors like red, green, blue or white.

Uploaded by

Thanh Pham Minh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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App Inventor + IoT: 60

Control RGB LED with Micro:bit I/O mins

pins (with Basic Connection


tutorial completed)

Level: advanced

This tutorial will help you work with App Inventor + IoT and control
a RGB LED on a micro:bit controller.
 source .aia

Pairing with Micro:bit


First, you will need to pair your
phone or tablet to the micro:bit
controller, using these
directions. Your device must be
paired with the micro:bit in
order for the app to work.

Hardware list
In this project, we are going to control a RGB LED (which is
connected to Micro:bit) using App Inventor. RGB means this knd of
LED actually has three different color LEDs inside (red, green and
blue).
Here are the components you need for this project:
● BBC micro:bit dev board, 1
● breadboard, 1
● wires, 4
● RGB LED (common cathode), 1
Demo video: https://youtu.be/TQcRy1JkFBc

Please connect Micro:bit and RGB LED according to this table:


Micro:bit RGB LED
(common cathode)
GND GND (longest pin, grey wire)
P0 R (red wire)
P1 G (green wire)
P2 B (blue wire)
Finish as below, let’s take a look:

Blue
Green P0
GND P1
Red P2
GND

Bend the wire to U shape and hook on Micro:bit pins.

GND 2 1 0
App Inventor
This app lets you make an RGB LED light up in four different colors
by clicking buttons on your app. First, log into MIT App Inventor site
and create a new project.

Designer
You should complete the App Inventor + IoT Basic Connection
tutorial to make a basic connection to the micro:bit device. If you
prefer, you can download the completed .aia file here.

The remaining steps all build off of the starter code for Basic
Connection tutorial and its .aia source code.
First, we need to add the necessary extension.
● In the Palette window, click on Extension at the
bottom and then on "Import extension" and click
on "URL".
○ Paste micro:bit extension URL:
http://iot.appinventor.mit.edu/assets/com.bbc.mi
cro:bit.profile.aix
● Add a Microbit_IOpin component to your app
by dragging it onto the Viewer, set its
BluetoothDevice to "BluetoothLE1" (Don’t
forget!).
Let’s add more components into our app to control micro:bit’s I/O
pins.
● From the Layout palette, drag in a
TableArrangement component.
• Set its width to "Fill parent", height to
200 pixels, row to 2 and column to 3.
• Set its Visible property to false, it will be
set to true after the Bluetooth connection
between micro:bit is established.
● Add five buttons into the tablearrangement
component, and set their text properties to
"Red", "Green", "Blue", "White" and "Off",
representing different colors of the RGB LED
light.

After some adjusting, your designer should look similar to this. It


doesn’t have to be exactly the same. Feel free to modify the
component properties, such as background color, position and text
size.
Blocks
STEP 1: Request updates when connected
In the BluetoothLE1.Connected event, we show messages to tell
user that we are connected with micro:bit and set micro:bit’s pin
status as "digital output" since we are going to control a RGB LED
in this project. With three Microbit_Io_Pin.ConfigurePin methods,
please specify the pinNumber to 0, 1 and 2 (means P0, P1 and P2
pin of micro:bit and set the analog field to false and the input field to
false.
Let’s get a look at Microbit_Io_Pin.ConfigurePin method. It has
three parameters: pinNumber (pin index), analog (true to analog,
false to digital) and input (true to input, false to output).

This is to set micro:bit P0 pin as digital output. You can connect


component like LED or relay module to this pin. For micro:bit I/O pins
detail please check this link: http://microbit.org/guide/hardware/pins/
And this sets micro:bit’s P2 pin as analog input. You can connect a
component like a potentiometer to this pin.

STEP2: Procedure to update LED status


Here we use a procedure to manage instructions for control micro:bit
pin status. Please add a procedure and click the blue gear to add
three parameters. Rename this procedure to "ledControl", and add
three parameters as "r", "g" and "b." Each of them is used to control
a pin of RGB LED.
Now add three Microbit_Io_Pin.WriteOutputPinData methods into
this procedure. For the first one, since we’ve connected RGB LED’s
R/G/B pin to micro:bit’s P0/P1/P2 pin, we set the first method’s
pinNumber to 0 and pinValue to r variable; the second one’s to 1 and
g variable and the third one’s to 2 and b variable. Our ledControl
procedure is finished as below:

STEP2: Button to light up red


When Button_R is pressed, we call ledControl procedure in the
previous step and set its parameters to (1, 0, 0), this means light the
LED in red color (by putting P0 to high voltage level and P1/P2 to
low).

STEP3: other buttons for different colors


For the other four buttons, we still call ledControl procedure but with
different parameters:
● Button_G: (0, 1, 0) to light up in green color.
● Button_B: (0, 0, 1) to light up in blue color.
● Button_W: (1, 1, 1) to light up in white color.
● Button_Off: (0, 0, 0) to turn the light off.

STEP4: Disconnect from the micro:bit


You can disconnect from the micro:bit by clicking the
ButtonDisconnect. This will reset the app to its initial state to wait for
next connect request.
Tips
Your app should now be working! Make sure you have paired the
Bluetooth on your Android device to your micro:bit. Then test it out
by connecting your micro:bit device using the MIT AI2 Companion
(if you haven't already) or installing it by .apk.
Press buttons on the app to see if our RGB LED lights up with the
correct color.

Brainstorming
1. Try to light up the RGB LED with different colors, such as red
and blue lighting up together to shine in purple.
2. Add a SpeechRecognizer component to control the RGB LED
by your voice command.

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