Once you’ve learned the basics of how to blink lights, move servos, and handle inputs, it often comes naturally to want make a larger project that does more than one thing — more LEDs, more servos, and more buttons and other inputs.
One thing you’ll quickly find is that as you add more things to your circuit and code, they are each delaying each other. So one blinking LED works fine, but when you add the second, their blinking patterns are always affecting each other. If you slow one down, the other slows as well.
If you add multiple servos, you might notice that you can’t get them to move at the same time. One completes its full sweeping motion, and then the other completes its full sweep. They move sequentially, but never at the same time.
This guide will teach you a technique that you can use to manage multiple things happening at once in your CircuitPython project.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
