CH41-B - Thumbstick LEDs Function

We'll connect the Thumbstick with a Crazy Circuits Ribbon Cable using all four wires.

Plug the three-wire connector of the Crazy Circuits Ribbon Cable into the row with Pin 0 on the Bit Board. The wire colors should match the pin header colors, with S1 (yellow) going to the yellow pin.

Next, plug S2 (orange) into Pin 13. (S2 is separated from the three-wire connector to allow you to plug it into another row.)

To the Thumbstick plug - (black) into GND, + (red) into +5V; S1 (yellow) into VRx; S2 (orange) into SW.

We won't plug anything into VRy pin for this example.

We used a 3D printed part we designed to hold the Thumbstick in place on a LEGO baseplate.

We attached two 2x4 LEGO Bricks to the bottom of the 3D printed holder to allow it to snap onto the LEGO Baseplate a bit easier. (We also added a few small bricks to hold the ribbon cable in place.)

Alternately you can try to use some LEGO bricks and some rubber bands to hold the sensor in place, or just hold it in your hand.

3D print your own Thumbstick Sensor Holder.

If you've never used a micro:bit before you'll want to check out this guide: Bit Board V2 Setup and Use

We're going to load the following code for our Thumbstick LEDs Function program: https://makecode.microbit.org/_JHR5Ft5P3...

In the on start block we'll disable the LED matrix.

In the forever loop we'll set xVal to the value from Pin 0 (which is connected to VRx, the X-axis of the Thumbstick) and then check if the value is between a number of ranges.

For each range we'll turn on all but one of the LEDs. By moving the Thumbstick we can "move" the unlit LED left or right.

This time we'll use a function to control the LEDs. By passing parameters to the function (1 or 0 for on or off) we can use much less code to control things.

Remember, an analog input can give us values from 0 to 1023. Here we've divided that range into five sets, each covering approximately 1/5 of the range.

Once the code is loaded it should start running immediately.

You can power the micro:bit via the USB cable you used to load the code or you can use a battery pack plugged into the Bit Board.

Move the Thumbstick left and right and you should see the "unlit" LED move from left to right.

Follow along with our recorded Live Stream!

(We'll add the video to this step after we do the stream!)