Adafruit CircuitPython Module Install
To use the MPR121 with your Adafruit CircuitPython board you'll need to install the Adafruit_CircuitPython_MPR121 module on your board.
First make sure you are running the latest version of Adafruit CircuitPython for your board.
Next you'll need to install the necessary libraries to use the hardware--carefully follow the steps to find and install these libraries from Adafruit's CircuitPython library bundle. For example the Circuit Playground Express guide has a great page on how to install the library bundle for both express and non-express boards.
Remember for non-express boards like the Trinket M0, Gemma M0, and Feather/Metro M0 basic you'll need to manually install the necessary libraries from the bundle:
- adafruit_mpr121
- adafruit_bus_device
You can also download the adafruit_mpr121.zip which contains the adafruit_mpr121 folder from its releases page on Github.
If your board doesn't support USB mass storage, like the ESP8266, then use a tool like ampy to copy the file to the board.
Before continuing make sure your board's lib folder or root filesystem has the adafruit_mpr121, and adafruit_bus_device folders copied over.
Example
To learn how to use the MPR121 module code you can look at the simpletest.py example included in the library. Save this as a main.py file on your board:
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2017 Tony DiCola for Adafruit Industries
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
# Simple test of the MPR121 capacitive touch sensor library.
# Will print out a message when any of the 12 capacitive touch inputs of the
# board are touched. Open the serial REPL after running to see the output.
# Author: Tony DiCola
import time
import board
import busio
# Import MPR121 module.
import adafruit_mpr121
# Create I2C bus.
i2c = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
# Create MPR121 object.
mpr121 = adafruit_mpr121.MPR121(i2c)
# Note you can optionally change the address of the device:
# mpr121 = adafruit_mpr121.MPR121(i2c, address=0x91)
# Loop forever testing each input and printing when they're touched.
while True:
# Loop through all 12 inputs (0-11).
for i in range(12):
# Call is_touched and pass it then number of the input. If it's touched
# it will return True, otherwise it will return False.
if mpr121[i].value:
print(f"Input {i} touched!")
time.sleep(0.25) # Small delay to keep from spamming output messages.
Once the example is running open the serial REPL for your board. With your finger try pressing any of the 0-11 input pins on the MPR121. You should see a message printed every time an input is touched:
If you don't see any messages when you touch the inputs you might need to ground yourself to the board by touching the GND pin on the board with one finger and then touching the input pads with another finger.
Also make sure nothing is touching the pins when you first run the script or else it might confuse the MPR121's touch detection (unmount the board's file system from your operating system, then press the board's reset button to reset the script and run it again with nothing touching the pins).
Usage
Examine the simpletest.py code to see how to use the MPR121 module.
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2017 Tony DiCola for Adafruit Industries
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
# Simple test of the MPR121 capacitive touch sensor library.
# Will print out a message when any of the 12 capacitive touch inputs of the
# board are touched. Open the serial REPL after running to see the output.
# Author: Tony DiCola
import time
import board
import busio
# Import MPR121 module.
import adafruit_mpr121
# Create I2C bus.
i2c = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
# Create MPR121 object.
mpr121 = adafruit_mpr121.MPR121(i2c)
# Note you can optionally change the address of the device:
# mpr121 = adafruit_mpr121.MPR121(i2c, address=0x91)
# Loop forever testing each input and printing when they're touched.
while True:
# Loop through all 12 inputs (0-11).
for i in range(12):
# Call is_touched and pass it then number of the input. If it's touched
# it will return True, otherwise it will return False.
if mpr121[i].value:
print(f"Input {i} touched!")
time.sleep(0.25) # Small delay to keep from spamming output messages.
First the module is imported with code like:
# Import MPR121 module. import adafruit_mpr121
This code initializes the I2C bus:
# Create I2C bus. import board import busio i2c = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
Remember for boards without hardware I2C like the ESP8266 you might need to use the bitbangio module to create the I2C bus:
# Create I2C bus for software I2C boards (ESP8266) import board import bitbangio i2c = bitbangio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
Once the I2C bus is intialized the MPR121 class can be created by passing it an instance of the I2C bus:
# Create MPR121 class. mpr121 = adafruit_mpr121.MPR121(i2c) # Note you can optionally change the address of the device: #mpr121 = adafruit_mpr121.MPR121(i2c, address=0x91)
Notice the MPR121 class initializer takes an optional address parameter if you changed the board's I2C address.
Now you're ready to start checking if inputs are touched. Notice the main loop for the example calls the MPR121 class is_touched function for every input:
# Loop forever testing each input and printing when they're touched.
while True:
# Loop through all 12 inputs (0-11).
for i in range(12):
# Call is_touched and pass it then number of the input. If it's touched
# it will return True, otherwise it will return False.
if mpr121.is_touched(i):
print('Input {} touched!'.format(i))
time.sleep(0.25) # Small delay to keep from spamming output messages.
Just pass a value 0 to 11 to the is_touched function and it will return a boolean True or False value depending on if the input is currently being touched or not. In the example it prints a small message when an input is touched.
The example doesn't show its usage but if you want to check all of the inputs at once you can call the touched function. This function returns a 12-bit value where each bit represents the touch state of an input. So bit 0 is input 0 and will be 1 if it's touched and 0 if it's not touched, bit 1 would be input 1, etc. For example to test if input 0 and 11 are being touched with one call you could run code like:
# Call touched to get a 12-bit value with the state of each MPR121 input.
touch = mpr121.touched()
# Test if exactly bit 0 and 11 are set to 1, i.e. input 0 and 11 are touched.
if touch == 0b100000000001:
print('Input 0 and 11 touched!')
# Or test if either bit 0 or 11 are set to 1, i.e. input 0 or 11 are touched:
if touch & 0b100000000000 > 0 or touch & 0b000000000001 > 0:
print('Input 0 or 11 touched!')
That's all there is to using the MPR121 module with CircuitPython!
Page last edited January 21, 2025
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