Like sands through the hourglass, so are the 1s and 0s of your Circuit Playground.
In this guide we’ll go through the steps to create an hourglass style timer with your Circuit Playground.
An hourglass is an ancient timing device used to measure a fixed amount of time. It contains two chambers separated by a thin neck that allows sand to pass from one chamber to the other very slowly. The overall size and amount of sand determines the amount of time. Once all the sand has emptied into one side, the hourglass is simply inverted to start counting time again.
Here, we’ll use the NeoPixels on the Circuit Playground to represent the grains of sand in an hourglass, having them “disappear” one at a time by turning them off. We can even have the hourglass “reset” by turning the Circuit Playground over. We’ll build this up one step at a time and walk through each one.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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