Digital Out

Code blocks used in this tutorial:

• digitalWritePin

Digital Signals

In electronics, there are two types of signals: digital and analog.

A digital signal only has two states: on or off.

An analog signal can have multiple states within a range (from 0 to 1023).

In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to control digital signals.

Electronics

For this tutorial, we are going to use the expansion pack, the LED module and 3 cables.

Let’s do the following steps:

1. Grab 1 cable and connect the S pin of the LED module to the S0 pin of the expansion pack. Make sure that the cable is connected to the S0 position.
2. Next, grab another cable and connect the + pin of the LED module to the V1 pin of the expansion pack. This can be connected on any pin as long as it is a red pin of V1.
3. Finally, grab the last cable and connect the - pin of the LED module to the G pin of the expansion pack. This can be connected on any pin as long as it is a black pin of G.

You should have something like the picture below:

Software

Start a New Project and let’s call it “DigitalOut”.

To control digital signals, we are going to use the code block digital write pin [P0▼] to (0) from the Advanced > Pins blocks.

To turn on the LED, we need to send an on digital signal. Likewise, to turn off the LED, we need to send an off digital signal. In MakeCode, on = 1 and off = 0.

Let’s make a simple blinking LED animation with a 500ms pause between states.

You should have something like this inside the forever block:

The simulation should show something like this. Notice how pin 0 changes color. That means voltage is flowing through the pin.

Now, upload the code and see it in action!

Are you up for a challenge?

Try to make a program that turns on the LED when you press button A and turns off the LED when you press button B.

Once you finish, you can check your solution with the answer here.