This tutorial will show you how to interface a PIR motion sensor with the Raspberry Pi and how to use the GPIO pins on it. The GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi are critical when it comes to making a hardware project, whether it's a robot or home automation system. In any case, you will have to use the GPIO (general purpose input/output) pins on the Raspberry Pi. With this simple tutorial, you will be able to learn how to control the output on the GPIO pins and read inputs through them. Moreover, you will get to read the output from a PIR motion sensor and write a simple code to blink an LED. If you're not familiar with the Raspberry Pi terminal, check out this tutorial on Basic Linux Commands. If you are a true beginner, you can always use our free e-book on Raspberry Pi and Arduino to get started from step 0. So gear up and get ready to have some fun with the Raspberry Pi GPIOs!

How Does It Work?





The Raspberry Pi GPIO can be accessed through a Python program. You will learn how to access these pins and the commands required to do so later in this tutorial. Each pin on the Raspberry Pi is named based on its order (1,2,3, ...) as shown in the diagram below: