GPIO Zero

A simple interface to everyday GPIO components used with Raspberry Pi

Latest release

The latest release is v0.6.0 public beta 1 released on 28th September 2015.

Motivation

The "hello world" program in Java is at least 5 lines long, and contains 11 jargon words which are to be ignored. The "hello world" program in Python is one simple line. However, the "hello world" of physical computing in Python (flashing an LED) is similar to the Java program:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setwarnings(False)

red = 2

GPIO.setup(red, GPIO.OUT)

GPIO.output(red, True)

6 lines of code to flash an LED. And skipping over why GPIO is used twice in the first line; what BCM means; why set warnings to False; and so on. Young children and beginners shouldn't need to sit and copy out several lines of text they're told to ignore. They should be able to read their code and understand what it means. This module provides a simple interface to everyday components. The LED example becomes:

from gpiozero import LED

red = LED(2)

red.on()

Any guesses how to turn it off?

Install

Install with pip::

sudo apt-get install python-pip python3-pip
sudo pip install gpiozero
sudo pip-3.2 install gpiozero

Both Python 3 and Python 2 are supported. Python 3 is recommended!

Upgrade

Upgrade to the latest version with:

sudo pip install gpiozero --upgrade
sudo pip-3.2 install gpiozero --upgrade

What's included?

Components:

LED
Buzzer
Button
Motion Sensor
Light Sensor
Temperature Sensor
Motor

Boards & accessories:

LED Board
Traffic Lights
PiLITEr
PI-TRAFFIC
Fish Dish
Traffic HAT

Getting started

See the input devices and output devices to get started. Also see the boards & accessories page for examples of using the included accessories.

For common programs using multiple components together, see the recipes page.

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