We have some workshops coming up in January/February 2024 in the Aberdeen Art Gallery, thanks to our successful application to the “Creative Funding Programme” from Aberdeen City Council in the summer!
We’ll be running free “drop in” sessions, where you can find out about Microbit s & “break out boards” (adding more inputs & outputs) to make really cool interactive things…
And we’re also running some “inventor” workshops (£45 per person) – but you get to keep £45 worth of kit! (Micro:bits, Breakout boards, sensors, LEDs, wires, breadboards, electronics etc). – Some spaces are sponsored by SRCN Solutions – so if you need financial assistance & would love to come to the workshop, get in touch to secure a sponsored space.
Step By Step PDF of how to build a “Yes/No” custom buttons display with a Raspberry Pi Pico, 2 x Custom Made Buttons & 2x7segment 4 digit LED backbacks
We have uploaded a PDF of the steps to build a “Yes/No” Custom Button + LED Digit displays on a raspberry Pi Pico , with step by step guide on how to make the custom wooden buttons, and the easy implementation of the adafruit_ht16k33 library for the LED Backpacks.
You can also download the zip file of the code here.
Phil’s working on some interactive electronics for a project, and he was asked to create a counter that could show how much money you could make from 20p recycling deposits using CircuitPython & a Tiny2040
Phil’s working on some interactive electronics for a project, and he was asked to create a counter that could show how much money you could make from 20p recycling deposits. The counter + button in a #circuitPython was easy to implement (see other “weekly project” posts for a “how to”) – But playing an MP3 file has become incredibly easy with CircuitPython, having the library / code built in to the system! so no need to add a new library or even extra electronics to your CircuitPython Powered Board of Choice! (We’ve been using the Raspberry Pi #Pico & the Pimoroni #Tiny2040 )
Below is a short video of the Tiny2040 + button + mono speaker counting up when the counter value is sent to a function that converts it to a list of MP3’s to play.
Phil took a while to create an algorithm to create a “sentence” that stitches together the necessary files needed… using small MP3 files saved to the 8mb Tiny2040. The numbers 1 to 20 were recorded, then, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 & 90. Phil also created with a speech synthesiser, “pence”, “and”, “pound”, “pounds” – which can then create any number up to 999 (Thousands + were unnecessary at the moment!) When it reaches “£100” – a clip saying “you’ve made a lot of money, perhaps donate it to charity?” is spoken, then the counter resets !
The code below is Phil’s “Robust” programming… which works nicely, and can even cope with increments of 5p – but single counts break it (his “logic” should be improved – but the 5 / 10 / 20p increments work!
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2020 Jeff Epler for Adafruit Industries
# Custom Code by Philip Thompson / Digital Maker CIC
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
"""CircuitPython Essentials Audio Out MP3 """
import board
import digitalio
from time import sleep
from audiomp3 import MP3Decoder
try:
from audioio import AudioOut
except ImportError:
try:
from audiopwmio import PWMAudioOut as AudioOut
except ImportError:
pass # not always supported by every board!
button = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.GP0)
button.switch_to_input(pull=digitalio.Pull.DOWN)
audio = AudioOut(board.A0)
# You have to specify some mp3 file when creating the decoder
mp3 = open("none.mp3", "rb")
decoder = MP3Decoder(mp3)
decoder.file = mp3
audio.play(decoder)
# calculate money from number stuff
def convertArrayToString(a):
return(' '.join(map(str, a)))
def last_digit(num):
if 10 < num < 20: # it's a teen!
return [str(num)+".mp3"]
else:
last_digit_unsigned = abs(num) % 10
return [str(num)+".mp3"] if last_digit_unsigned == 0 else [str(num)[0]+"0.mp3", "5.mp3"]
# used in making a sentence of the value of the number
ppp = ['pence.mp3']
lb = ['pound.mp3']
lbs = ['pounds.mp3']
def numToMoney(v):
if v < 20: # unique "quick returns"
return([(str(v)+".mp3")] + ppp)
elif (v > 9999): # no one will make this much money from recycling!?
return(["too_much.mp3"])
elif (15 < v < 100): # just pence
return(last_digit(v) + ppp)
else:
tupV = str(v)
if len(tupV) == 3:
if (tupV[0] == "1"):
lll = lb
else:
lll = lbs
if (tupV[1] + tupV[2] == "00"): # flat £
return([tupV[0]+".mp3"] + lll)
else:
if tupV[1] != "0": # not a "x pounds tens pence
return([tupV[0]+".mp3"] + lll + ["and.mp3"] + last_digit(int(tupV[1]+tupV[2]))+ppp)
else:
return([tupV[0]+".mp3"] + lll + ["and.mp3"] + ["5.mp3"] + ppp)
else:
if (tupV[1] + tupV[2] + tupV[3] == "000"): # flat £
return([tupV[0]+"0.mp3"] + lbs)
else: # complicated number x pounds y (z) pence
tA = tupV[0] + tupV[1]
tB = tupV[2] + tupV[3]
if (tB == "00"):
s = [tA+".mp3"] + lbs
elif (tB == "05"):
s = [tA+".mp3"] + lbs + ["and.mp3"] + ["5.mp3"] + ppp
else:
s = [tA+".mp3"] + lbs + ["and.mp3"] + last_digit(int(tB)) + ppp
return(s)
# res = arr[::-1] #reversing using list slicing
def money(n):
moneyArray = []
moneyArray.extend(numToMoney(n))
#print(moneyArray)
for w in moneyArray:
decoder.file = open(w, "rb")
audio.play(decoder)
#print("playing", w)
while audio.playing:
sleep(0.1)
counter = 0
while True:
while audio.playing:
pass
if button.value:
counter += 20
money(counter)
sleep(0.3)
if counter > 9999:
counter = 0
The Button is in Pin GP0 & the Speaker Signal Out is in pin A0 … you can’t get simpler! Amazing! MP3 files played with CircuitPython on a Tiny2040 – Done!
Phil showcases “live drum” samples & structures in Sonic Pi.
So, Phil is always playing around with the amazing Sonic Pi (By Sam Aaron)… if you’ve not got it, you really should download it… it’s an amazing & FUN tool to make music with AND learn / push your Ruby programming…
So! Phil has been working on making “live sounding” drums in Sonic Pi for a while, as well as an ability to create different patters & the ability to create structures (“songs”) – he’s come up with this:
One of the helpful aspects to this set up is, the beautifully recorded free drum samples from Judd Madden ( http://juddmadden.com/drum-samples.html ). The drum sounds in Sonic Pi are great, but Judd’s samples are absolutely superb.
Phil has commented the code as best he can, if you do try to reproduce this, you’ll need to save the drum samples into the right folders…
use_debug false
use_cue_logging false
use_bpm 120
d_root = "C:/Drums/twi"
drums_bass = "Kick/"
drums_snare = "Snares/"
drums_hat = "Hats/"
drums_cymbal = "Cymbals/"
drums_tom = "Toms/"
#......[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
# some patterns for bass / snare
bds0 = [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]
bds1 = [1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]
bds2 = bds1 + [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,2,0,0,0,0,2,0]
bds3 = [1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,1,0,0,0,0,0]
sns0 = bds0
sns1 = [0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0]
sns2 = sns1 + [2,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3]
sns3 = [0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,3,0]
#some constants (rr = random range to draw from)
@rr = 12
@mc = 0
@sec = "intro"
# sections is an Array that holds arrays with "section" and a range as to when they should play.
# we later use the values to calculate how long the "main loop" sleeps for before moving to the next position/section
sections = [
["intro", (0..0).to_a],
["space", (1..1).to_a],
["build", (2..5).to_a],
["filler", (6..7).to_a],
["main", (8..15).to_a],
["filler", (16..17).to_a],
["main", (18..25).to_a],
["end", (26..26).to_a]
]
# change to true to introduce the various drums to the mix
# "parts" is a HASH that holds info on what drums to play for each section
parts = {
"intro" => {'bds' => false,
'sns' => false,
'hts' => false,
'cym' => true,
'spl' => false,
'tms' => true,
'rnd' => false},
"build" => {'bds' => true,
'sns' => false,
'hts' => true,
'cym' => true,
'spl' => false,
'tms' => false,
'rnd' => false},
"main" => {'bds' => true,
'sns' => true,
'hts' => true,
'cym' => true,
'spl' => true,
'tms' => false,
'rnd' => false},
"filler" => {'bds' => true,
'sns' => true,
'hts' => true,
'cym' => true,
'spl' => false,
'tms' => true,
'rnd' => true},
"space" => {'bds' => false,
'sns' => true,
'hts' => true,
'cym' => true,
'spl' => true,
'tms' => false,
'rnd' => false},
"end" => {'bds' => false,
'sns' => false,
'hts' => false,
'cym' => false,
'spl' => false,
'tms' => false,
'rnd' => false}
}
# a HAS that holds info on what patterns to play for what section
drumsForSections = {
"intro" => {"bds" => bds0, "sns"=> sns0},
"build" => {"bds" => bds1, "sns"=> sns0},
"main" => {"bds" => bds2, "sns"=> sns2},
"filler" => {"bds" => bds2, "sns"=> sns3},
"space" => {"bds" => bds3, "sns"=> sns3},
"end" => {"bds" => bds0, "sns"=> sns0},
}
# main counter keeps track of what section we should use
# we "sleep" for bar * (end - start) & pt in "8 beats" if the value of e-s = 0
live_loop :mainCount do
bar = 8
tick
# get the name of the section from the sections array via "look" (the value of tick on this loop)
@sec = sections[look][0]
puts @sec # show the current section name
if @sec == "end"
stop
else
if @sec == "main"
# each loop if "main" starts with a Crash Cymbal
sample d_root+drums_cymbal, "Crash C #{rand_i(4)+1}"
end
# calculate how long we should sleep for from this sections start / end numbers * 8 beats
s = sections[look][1][0]
e = sections[look][1][-1]
zzz = (e-s)*bar
if zzz == 0
zzz = 8
end
sleep zzz
end
end
# ========== drum tracks in separate live_loops
live_loop :ride do
# simple ride cymbal playing each beat, if "true"
if parts[@sec]["cym"]then
# randomise the ride sample used & vary the amp value
sample d_root+drums_cymbal, "Ride Cymbal #{rand_i(2) + 1}", amp: rand(0.4) + 0.8
end
sleep 1
end
live_loop :bd do
tick
# bass drum plays, if "true"
if parts[@sec]["bds"] then
# we look in the "drumsForSections" in the current section (e.g. "intro") then the "bds" for that section
# if the beat ISN'T a 0, we play the BD sample.
if drumsForSections[@sec]["bds"].look != 0 then
sample d_root+drums_bass, rand_i(3) + 1, amp: rand(0.4) + 0.8
# if it's the start of a bar (8 beats) we add in a bd_boom
if look % 8 == 0 then
sample :bd_boom
end
end
end
sleep 0.25
end
# an array for different types of snares
snlist = [0, "Off", "On", "Flam"]
live_loop :sn do
tick
with_fx :pan, pan: -0.25 do
# we look in the "drumsForSections" in the current section (e.g. "intro") then the "sns" for that section
if parts[@sec]["sns"] then
# if the beat ISN'T a 0, we play the Snare sample.
# and also use the number to pull in the specific snare style (Off, On, Flam)
if drumsForSections[@sec]["sns"].look != 0 then
sample d_root+drums_snare, snlist[drumsForSections[@sec]["sns"].look], pick, amp: rand(0.4) + 0.6
end
end
sleep 0.25
end
end
live_loop :splash do
tick
p = 0
# if splashes are to play ( in parts : 'spl' => true )
if parts[@sec]["spl"] then
sample d_root+drums_cymbal, "Crash", "A", pick, amp: rand(0.4) + 0.8, pan: 0.3
# add a random china bell hit for variance
if (1..3).include? rand_i(@rr) then
sleep 1.5
p = 1.5
sample d_root+drums_cymbal, "China", "Bell", pick, amp: rand(0.4) + 0.8, pan: 0.3
end
end
sleep 8 - p
end
# set up some arrays for the Tom Filler
# tom spread will sequentially play the specific tm type (2xhigh 2xmid, 2xFloor here)
tomspread = ["high", "high", "mid", "mid", "floor", "floor"].ring
# we can also pan the tom hits from left to right
tompan = [-0.8, -0.6, -0.4, -0.2, 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6].ring
# a counter to keep track of what tom to play in tomspread
tomtick = 0
live_loop :tm do
# if "tms" is true for this section
if parts[@sec]["tms"] then
# check for "rnd" for potential tom hit randomisation
if parts[@sec]["rnd"]
if rand_i(@rr) == 0 then
sample d_root+drums_tom, tomspread[tomtick], pick, amp: rand(0.4) + 0.4, pan: tompan[tomtick]
tomtick = tomtick+1
end
else
sample d_root+drums_tom, tomspread[tomtick], pick, amp: rand(0.4) + 0.4, pan: tompan[tomtick]
tomtick = tomtick+1
end
end
sleep 0.25
end
If you have any questions or comments, do get in touch!
Phil is working away on the “Oop Tree” on the Pico, but is getting into “slow progress” with getting to grips with the implementation of how the tree will be affected by various inputs (water, food, light).
So as a “quick show n tell” – he’s put together a quick project using a #pimoroni #tiny2040 microcontroller, again, running the latest version of #circuitPython. Having found a box of old blown Valves (Beautiful objects!) Phil thought he would try to convert them into a useful light, using an RGB led, a button and a sliding potentiometer.
Phil did wire up a classic 4 legged RGB led & got it working, but had some very neat, single “NeoPixels” from Ada Fruit lying around, so soldered some pins onto one & used that, as instead of needing 3 separate pins to control the Red Green & Blue pins, you can do that all through one pin on the NeoPixel. There’s even a handy library to help ease the controls of changing the light colours / intensity.
First, Phil wired the push button into a digital pin (GP7) + Ground, then added a sliding potentiometer (you need 3 connections for this input, a constant 3v, a ground connection, then your “reading” (analogue) connection (A3)). Lastly, phil connected the 3 wires (5v, Gnd + A0) to the NeoPixel. Because you can “chain” NeoPixels, be sure to use the “in” side of the NeoPixel. Phil then drilled a hole into the base of the old Valve, he did this outside (well ventilated) and wore a mask, just in case there are any nasty old chemicals inside the housing or valve itself.
The full code for Phil’s RGB Led can be found here and a wee explanation below:
This project uses a single pushbutton to “cycle through” different states the NeoPixel uses. There is a Dictionary (Dict) that keeps information for LED levels (a “Base” RGB colour + “mix” (potential new levels to be added to the base colour). Each Dict Key is a string that should make the values obvious! The last setting is to make the slider decide what colour the RGB led should be…
Using a few functions Phil wrote for previous projects, you can now pass two tuples (r,g,b) and add them together to return the “mixed” (r,g,b) value – and apply it to the NeoPixel with the simple library method “pixels[0] = (r,g,b)” and “pixels.show()” (to update the NeoPixel).
The slider affects the possible “maximum mix” value by first converting its raw value (130 to 65000+) to 0 & what ever the current maximum value is for that “mix” (stored in the dictionary) this is done for each value (r, g, b). So when the slider is at “0” the maximum possible random number is between 0 & 0 (no new colour added to the base colour!) the higher the slider goes, the more randomness for each Red, Green, Blue “mix” value is possible… so the light starts to flicker within the range of the “base + mix” values…
The Slide setting uses a “wheel” method from Ada Fruit, and we “just” need to map the slide value (again from 130 to 65000+) to 0 & 255. When the slider is moved, it takes its position & passes an RGB value to the Neopixel to cycle from Green to Green over the spectrum. Nice.
Not much to show this week from Phil, he’s been getting deep into learning more about OOP in Python, and running into several problems that led him to more exploration, experimentation & fails (so, as we said, not much to show). He also sadly lost his 22 year old cat “Link” this week…
He did however, last week get into “NVM” (Non Volatile Memory) – A very elegant way of writing data to the Pico, so you can save info & recall it when the Pico Starts up again… We had tried using it for the Dinky OSC, but the older versions of CircuitPython didn’t support it, or at least were buggy with the ability to save without hanging the Pico (and forcing “Nuke ReFlashes!”).
Martin had read on the fantastic CircuitPython discord channel that the NVM issues had been addressed in the latest version. And so Phil re-opened his exploration of the use of NVM on a Pico… Phil did a quick search on discord & found :
Phil followed the link, downloaded the library from FoamyGuy and within minutes, had a fully working, easily updateable way of reading & writing info to NVM ! Like a dream you can save a dictionary via NVM_helper & all the byte conversions are sorted in that amazing script… So! Phil is back on track to keep track of the digital Tree , so we can implement the Real Time Clock & apply the effect of time to the tree depending on how often the tree is watered & fed & given sunlight! We will then hopefully see the fully working Tamagochi-esque digital tree…
This is the first part of a new project, more details to be released later…
tr(uSDX)
Martin is a licensed radio amateur who enjoys building things. He was recently part of a UK group buy for a radio kit. The tr(uSDX) the radio is really tiny and can operate on five bands.
The main SMD parts were pre-soldered although Martin did have to solder on a couple of SMD parts, that had been sourced separately to the original PCB production. Other parts soldered on included all the connections and filter toroids. The whole build took a couple of hours. Once finished it was housed in a case the Phil had 3D printed.
The radio works well and puts out around five watts. One annoying issue though is the speaker, it’s very small and the audio quality it produces is not very good. One solution is to connect either headphones or a powered speaker to the Audio out socket.
Amplifier
Martin purchased a small powered speaker from Amazon but it produced horrendous interference with the radio. He thought “why not build my own!” He’s part of a group aligned to the GQRP club who are building a scratch built radio transceiver, part of the build is an audio amplifier based on an LM380 chip.
Design
The design from the ‘scratch built’ group includes a pre-amp. Martin decided that he wouldn’t need this as the signal source was reasonably amplified already, and wondered if the LM380 was the right chip to use as it’s been around a long time. Researching the other solutions, including LM386, can be noisy and a little underpowered, TDA2003, used in many car audio systems and seems to offer similar performance to LM380.
Martin eventually decided to stick with the LM380 as he had built a circuit using it before and there were a number of similar designs found on the internet in use by other radio amateurs.
One design difference Martin made to the scratch built design was to use 100uF coupling capacitor to the speaker as this acts to roll off some of the audio frequency below 300Hz. The amplifier will primarily be used with speech in the range 300Hz – 3kHz. Additional capacitors were added to increase noise immunity from RF sources and reduce hum, particularly on the signal input. Supply voltage can be anything from 9-15V. I decided to use a 3” 8ohm speaker for output.
KiCad
Martin’s final design was drawn up in KiCad
Building
Using the Manhattan construction approach to building the design. Martin says he “finds it easiest to use prefabricated joining square called MeSquares for the build, these are also available from GQRP, for members, or a similar product is available from Kanga Products“
The first step was to layout the design on 1/4” graph paper.
Then the parts were soldered to the single sided PCB. The squares were glued into place with super glue.
The final stage was to test it. Martin tested it using the output from the tr(uSDX) transceiver. The results were very favourable.
The LM380 runs a little hot so Martin will add some additional heat sinking to the pins 3,4,5 and 10,11,12 as detailed in the data sheet additionally the sound could be improved by mounting the speaker into a small wooden box.
For our new project we think at some point we are going to need to have an accurate measure of time that has passed and for this we will need a real time clock.
For our new project we think at some point we are going to need to have an accurate measure of time that has passed and for this we will need a real time clock.
The Pico doesn’t have it’s own clock, and for that matter non of the Raspberry Pi family do, a quick google search revealed a few different boards that could offer this facility.
I decided to go with one that was based on a DS1307 and communicated via I2C. I ordered three of them from Amazon at a cost of £4.99. They arrived complete with installed batteries, with a claimed running time of a few years which would be more than enough for our project.
Another Google search was undertaken to find out how to connect them to a Raspberry Pi Pico. Most articles suggested that they were primarily a 5V device as they were originally designed for use with an Arduino and so would need to have two pull-up resistors moved from the board for use with the 3.3V system of the Pico. The resistors are R2 and R3 in the above image. The boards also needed to have headers installed.
Connections
Only four connections were needed: GND: Ground VCC: 3.3V SDA: GP0 SCL: GP1
Luckily CircuitPython has a library for use with the DS1307, complete with an example code listing.
I installed the required libraries and ran the example code. An error came up complaining about a lack of pull-up resistors.
I installed a couple of resistors, anything around 3.3k should be fine, between the SDA/SCL pins and VCC (3.3V) and ran the code again.
This time there were no errors. The code, see below, has a part where you can set the time by changing the ‘if False’ statement to ‘if True’. Once this has been done change it back to False. The RTC clock will continue to keep the time even after the Pico has been powered off.
Code listing
import time
import board
import adafruit_ds1307
# To create I2C bus on specific pins
import busio
i2c = busio.I2C(board.GP1, board.GP0) # Pi Pico RP2040
rtc = adafruit_ds1307.DS1307(i2c)
# Lookup table for names of days (nicer printing).
days = ("Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday")
if False: # change to True if you want to set the time!
# year, mon, date, hour, min, sec, wday, yday, isdst
t = time.struct_time((2022, 5, 6, 15, 2, 15, 5, -1, -1))
# you must set year, mon, date, hour, min, sec and weekday
# yearday is not supported, isdst can be set but we don't do anything with it at this time
print("Setting time to:", t) # uncomment for debugging
rtc.datetime = t
print()
# pylint: enable-msg=using-constant-test
# Main loop:
while True:
t = rtc.datetime
# print(t) # uncomment for debugging
print(
"The date is {} {}/{}/{}".format(
days[int(t.tm_wday)], t.tm_mday, t.tm_mon, t.tm_year
)
)
print("The time is {}:{:02}:{:02}".format(t.tm_hour, t.tm_min, t.tm_sec))
time.sleep(1) # wait a second
Realisation
After doing this I realised that because I was connected to pin 36 (3V3 out) that I hadn’t actually needed to remove the on board resistors and wouldn’t need the added pull-up resistors either.
I soldered headers to the remaining two boards to test that I was correct and indeed I was. So we now have three working realtime clocks, but one of them needs pull-up resistors.
Object Orientated Programming in CircuitPython to make Digital Trees
We think we’ve taken the Asteroids development as far as we can just now (looking at speeding up the FFT calculations)… but, in the mean time, Phil has started re-visiting an old passion… OOP Trees!
Object Orientated Programming in CircuitPython to make Digital Trees… Phil used to play with Macromedia Director 8 / 8.5 (!) and made some digital trees. Phil’s had an idea of re-visiting making OOP trees, but on the tiny Raspberry Pi Pico using CircuitPython…
Over 2 days, Phil’s successfully written a Tree Class, thinking of a tree as a series of “nodes” – He passed several key parameters to the Tree Class, an X,Y location, how many nodes the tree will have (“the Trunk”), how much those nodes can vary in direction from each other & how far they will be from each other. t = Tree() # Params cut out for ease here
Phil had a brainwave, to define all the lengths & angles “at the start” – and then “simply” multiply the values by a scale (from 0 to 1) – the “age” of the tree… so the entire tree is drawn but “scaled down” (to 0) at the start & in a loop, slowly increase the tree’s “age” by a tiny increment… giving the impression of growth! (it all worked smoothly! Not bad for a self taught N00B(!) – Phil’s sure there are probably a lot of pythonic conventions that need to be learned! ).
So, having a “working trunk” growing & stretching nicely, Phil wondered about adding branches… The thing is, they are nearly identical to a Trunk, just that the base of the 1st node isn’t “at a fixed point” (in the “ground”) – but a node on the Trunk (or even another Branch!). With a quick addition of “fNode” (“follow node”) – the Trunk having fNode = None & a branch having fNode = parentNode, he added in the code.py t.newBranch([2,3,3,4, 10]) The array passed, are positions of nodes in t (duplicates just add more branches to that node!). He even put in an error check to see if a node requested is in the range of the parent’s nodes! IT ALL WORKED! woohoo! The Branch grows just like the Trunk, but its base node follows the position of its parent node!
With the branches & trunk now growing nicely (and stopping growing when it reaches the scale of 1), Phil turned to add in leaves… a new Class “leaf” was added to the script & contains info of a colour of leaf, the radius of the leaf (using vectorIO.Circle objects) . Phil thought that the control of when / where & how many leaves appear should be decided by each node (on the trunk or branches). Passing several random numbers to determine how many, how big, how far away from the node they should be was passed in to the object. A few functions Phil’s made (“utility scripts”) like getting an X,Y position based on a known x,y position + length & angle (using Pythagoras) & adding a random range of R G B values to a “base R G B” colour to get variations of greens / browns (any colour!) – Phil rendered out leaves a hoy! But, things were slowing down again on the tiny Pico… So Phil decided to only render leaves when their parents reached specific criteria (age / length away from root) – and this gave a lovely effect of the leaves slowly blinking into existence, as the tree aged!
Phil was inspired & energised , getting into a “playful” development state…”I’ll try this!” he thought… boom! it works! And so, he added a few playful things, like a random “gust of wind” that jiggles the nodes occasionally, increasing & decreasing the scale quickly with the 2 buttons from week 1 … so many possibilities …
Anyway, if you want to have a play (& probably hone / improve the OOP!) download the scripts for the Pico set up here. Have fun!