Plastic toys are great for hacking, modding and improving using Crickit! This box o' gears is fun for about 10 minutes...but when you add motors, sensors and robotics you can make cool interactive art
This example shows how to use the light sensor on the Circuit Playground Express to trigger a motor to rotate. With some audio effects it becomes a Force trainer, or a moving Theremin
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CircuitPython Code For "Force Wave" demo
This project is pretty simple, it looks to see when the light sensor is shaded by your hand and changes the motor from running to off or vice versa.
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2018 Limor Fried for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
import time
from busio import I2C
import analogio
from adafruit_seesaw.seesaw import Seesaw
from adafruit_seesaw.pwmout import PWMOut
from adafruit_motor import motor
import board
light = analogio.AnalogIn(board.LIGHT)
print("Wave on/off to turn")
# Create seesaw object
i2c = I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
seesaw = Seesaw(i2c)
# Create one motor on seesaw PWM pins 22 & 23
motor_a = motor.DCMotor(PWMOut(seesaw, 22), PWMOut(seesaw, 23))
motor_a.throttle = 0 # motor is stopped
while True:
print((light.value,))
# light value drops when a hand passes over
if light.value < 4000:
if motor_a.throttle:
motor_a.throttle = 0
else:
motor_a.throttle = 1 # full speed forward
while light.value < 5000:
# wait till hand passes over completely
pass
time.sleep(0.1)
CircuitPython Code For "Theremin" demo
We can adapt the code above to speed up or slow down the motor based on how far our hand is. The darker the sensor, the faster the motor spins!
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2018 Limor Fried for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
import time
from busio import I2C
import analogio
from adafruit_seesaw.seesaw import Seesaw
from adafruit_seesaw.pwmout import PWMOut
from adafruit_motor import motor
import board
light = analogio.AnalogIn(board.LIGHT)
print("Theramin-like turning")
# Create seesaw object
i2c = I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
seesaw = Seesaw(i2c)
# Create one motor on seesaw PWM pins 22 & 23
motor_a = motor.DCMotor(PWMOut(seesaw, 22), PWMOut(seesaw, 23))
motor_a.throttle = 0 # motor is stopped
def map_range(x, in_min, in_max, out_min, out_max):
# Maps a number from one range to another.
mapped = (x-in_min) * (out_max - out_min) / (in_max-in_min) + out_min
if out_min <= out_max:
return max(min(mapped, out_max), out_min)
return min(max(mapped, out_max), out_min)
while True:
print((light.value,))
motor_a.throttle = map_range(light.value, 500, 8000, 1.0, 0)
time.sleep(0.1)
Page last edited January 22, 2025
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