[Hardware] How To Make a Raspberry Pi Pico Reaction Game With PicoZero

[Agent47]

 

 

It is fair to say that the Raspberry Pi Pico disrupted the microcontroller market in early 2021. The $4 board has more in common with an Arduino than a Raspberry Pi, but the Pico has proven to be a much more capable beast.

With the Raspberry Pi Pico, we can make LEDs blink, build robots and even run Doom. But for those new to programming, microcontrollers and electronics there are a few barriers to entry that need to be broken down.

MicroPython is an excellent language for the Raspberry Pi Pico, (bettered only by CircuitPython in our humble opinion) but to the uninitiated it can quickly become “word soup”. Abstracting the code, making it simpler to understand is what we need and luckily PicoZero looks to be the solution.
PicoZero takes a page from GPIO Zero’s book in that it is a beginner friendly Python library for common electronics. GPIO Zero, created and maintained by former Raspberry Pi employee Ben Nuttall and Canonical software engineer Dave Jones created a seismic shift for learners. It simplified and exemplified how users could interact with common electronics using Python on the Raspberry Pi. PicoZero from the Raspberry Pi Foundation follows the same principles and while it is still in beta, we just had to build a project with it.
Our project will introduce the basic inputs and outputs of the PicoZero module via a reaction game, designed to test the reflexes of two players versus an exceptionally loud buzzer.

For This Project You Will Need
Raspberry Pi Pico
2 x Push buttons
1 x DC buzzer
1 x 10K Ohm Resistor (Brown-Black-Orange-Gold)
8 x Male to male jumper wires
Large breadboard
Modelling clay / Play-Doh