In this article, we are going to create a django project that will enable website visitors from anywhere in the world control LEDs.
What you need to get setup:
- Any Raspberry pi (would recommend version 3 or 4)
- Three LEDs and three resistors
- Connecting wires (Female to male if you intend to connect directly to the GPIO pins)
- Optional – Extension bus (male to male connecting wires should be used in this place)
- Text editor, vscode preferably since there is an arm version to run on the pi
Steps to follow:
- Connect the circuit by choosing preferable GPIO pins for your leds(as a precaution, test whether the LEDs are working properly by connecting them to either the 3 or 5 Volts GPIO pins before building the final circuit)
- For this project, we are connecting only 3 LEDs(red, purple and green)
- Create a django project and app(work in a virtual environment)
- Using pip, also install the gpiozero package to enable us use the GPIO pins in our project. Note that if you are not working in a virtual environment then gpiozero is already installed system wide
- Using you text editor, type the code the below
- Install ngrok to help with secure port forwarding and also will generate a custom link that you will insert in the ALLOWED_HOSTS configuration in our settings.py file
- When all is done, run the server and use the link generated by ngrok to access your website from anywhere
views.py ----- begins
#to help us render html httprespnses
from django.shortcuts import render
#to be used in creating led objects
from gpiozero import LED
#for pausing our app
from time import sleep
#objects to represent leds
red = LED(18)
purple = LED(21)
red = LED(18)
#home view to render homepage
def home(request):
return render(request, 'home.html')
#Handle the red led
def red_led(request):
red.on()
sleep(2)
red.off()
return render(request, 'home.html')
#Handle the purple led
def purple_led(request):
purple.on()
sleep(2)
purple.off()
return render(request, 'home.html')
#Handle the green led
def green_led(request):
green.on()
sleep(2)
green.off()
return render(request, 'home.html')
views.py --- ends
home.html ----- begins
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
<li><a href="{% url 'red_led' %}">RED LIGHT</a></li>
<li><a href="{% url 'purple_led' %}">PURPLE LIGHT</a></li>
<li><a href="{% url 'green_led' %}">GREEN LIGHT</a></li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
home.html ----- ends
urls.py ----- begins
from django.urls import path
from . import views
urlpatterns = [
path('home/', views.home, name="home"),
path('red/', views.red, name="red_led"),
path('purple/', views.purple, name="purple_led"),
path('green/', views.green, name="green_led"),
]
urls.py ----- ends
settings.py --- begins
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['site.ngrok.io']
settings.py --- ends