First GPIO program (LED blink) in Raspberry Pi - Mini Project: Build & Apply

First GPIO program (LED blink)

📖 Scenario: You have a Raspberry Pi connected to an LED on GPIO pin 17. You want to make the LED blink on and off repeatedly.

🎯 Goal: Write a simple Python program to blink an LED connected to GPIO pin 17 on your Raspberry Pi.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use the RPi.GPIO library to control GPIO pins

Set up GPIO pin 17 as an output

Turn the LED on and off with a delay

Use a loop to blink the LED 5 times

Print a message when blinking is done

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Controlling LEDs and other devices with Raspberry Pi GPIO pins is common in home automation, robotics, and electronics projects.

💼 Career

Understanding GPIO programming is useful for jobs in embedded systems, IoT development, and hardware prototyping.

1

Set up GPIO and LED pin

Import the RPi.GPIO library as GPIO and the time module. Then set the GPIO mode to GPIO.BCM and create a variable called led_pin with the value 17.

Raspberry Pi

# Import libraries and set GPIO mode
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use import RPi.GPIO as GPIO and import time. Then call GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM) and assign 17 to led_pin.

2

Configure LED pin as output

Use GPIO.setup to set led_pin as an output pin.

Raspberry Pi

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
led_pin = 17
# Set up led_pin as output
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Call GPIO.setup(led_pin, GPIO.OUT) to make the pin an output.

3

Blink the LED 5 times

Write a for loop that runs 5 times. Inside the loop, turn the LED on with GPIO.output(led_pin, GPIO.HIGH), wait 0.5 seconds using time.sleep(0.5), turn the LED off with GPIO.output(led_pin, GPIO.LOW), and wait another 0.5 seconds.

Raspberry Pi

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
led_pin = 17

GPIO.setup(led_pin, GPIO.OUT)
# Blink LED 5 times
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use for i in range(5): and inside it turn the LED on and off with 0.5 second pauses.

4

Clean up and print done message

After the loop, call GPIO.cleanup() to reset the GPIO pins. Then print "Blinking done!" to the screen.

Raspberry Pi

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
led_pin = 17

GPIO.setup(led_pin, GPIO.OUT)

for i in range(5):
    GPIO.output(led_pin, GPIO.HIGH)
    time.sleep(0.5)
    GPIO.output(led_pin, GPIO.LOW)
    time.sleep(0.5)

# Clean up GPIO and print done message
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Call GPIO.cleanup() after the loop and then print "Blinking done!".