Make your own arcade buttons and connect them to a raspberry pi for game development!

Learn how to wire arcade buttons to your raspberry pi, write python code to read button presses, and use it in your games. …

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Learn how to wire arcade buttons to your raspberry pi, write python code to read button presses, and use it in your games.

Raspberry Pi is a popular platform for game development, especially with the rise of RetroPie and other emulators. If you’re building a simple arcade game, you can easily connect buttons to your Raspberry Pi using GPIO pins and Python code. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do it step-by-step.

1. Hardware requirements:

• Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 (any model will work)
• Arcade buttons (we recommend using momentary push buttons with a built-in LED for visual feedback)
• Breadboard and jumper wires
• 3D printed case (optional, but recommended)

2. Wiring: Connect the arcade button to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins as follows:

• Button VCC to 5V (pin 2 or 4)
• Button GND to GND (pin 6)
• Button signal pin to a GPIO input pin (e.g., pin 11)
• Button LED ground to GND (pin 6)
• Button LED positive to a GPIO output pin (e.g., pin 13)

Here’s an example of how the wiring should look:

3. Install the necessary libraries: To read input from the buttons, we’ll use the gpiozero library. You can install it using pip:

sudo pip3 install gpiozero

4. Python code: Create a new Python script and import the necessary modules:

from gpiozero import Button
from time import sleep

Next, set up the button input and LED output pins:

button = Button(11) # using GPIO pin 11 for button input
led_pin = 13      # using GPIO pin 13 for LED output

Now we can read button presses and control the LED:

while True:
    if button.is_pressed:
        print("Button pressed!")
        # do something in your game, like move a character or trigger an event
        
        # turn on the LED for 1 second when the button is pressed
        led = OutputDevice(led_pin, active_high=False)
        led.on()
        sleep(1)
        led.off()
    else:
        print("Button not pressed")

This code will print “Button pressed!” to the console whenever you press the button and turn on the LED for 1 second. You can replace this with any action you want your game character or event to perform when the button is pressed.

5. Test your setup: Run your Python script and test pressing the arcade buttons. Make sure the LED turns on when you press the button, and the console prints “Button pressed!”

That’s it! You can now connect multiple buttons to your Raspberry Pi and use them in your game development projects. Use this as a starting point and customize it for your specific needs. Happy coding!