Light Animation while button pressed

[Celerii]

Hi everyone,

I am discovering pybricks with my LEGO buggy + a PU remote and it is working well, it is so much better than on a smartphone, thanks a lot for this!

Just a small thing that I cannot manage to do with the code: I would like to have the hub's light animated while the right side red button is pressed, but basically only the first color stays active (red, in this case):

    if (Button.LEFT in pressed):
        hub.light.on(Color.BLUE)
    elif (Button.RIGHT in pressed):
        hub.light.animate([Color.RED, Color.ORANGE, Color.YELLOW, Color.GREEN, Color.CYAN, Color.BLUE, Color.VIOLET, Color.MAGENTA], interval=100)
    else:
        hub.light.on(Color.GREEN)

I have also tried with the while(Button.RIGHT in pressed) but it does not work either... What could be a solution?

Thanks all!

[laurensvalk]

Your animation works for me:

from pybricks.hubs import TechnicHub
from pybricks.parameters import Color
from pybricks.tools import wait

hub = TechnicHub()
hub.light.animate([Color.RED, Color.ORANGE, Color.YELLOW, Color.GREEN, Color.CYAN, Color.BLUE, Color.VIOLET, Color.MAGENTA], interval=100)

wait(10*1000)

Can you share your whole script instead of just that portion? Could there be another part of your code that's setting it to red?

[Celerii]

It's funny, now while pressing the button the light stays... orange 😄

[laurensvalk]

I've updated the example above to be self-contained, so it's easier to see a working version in action.

You'll have to expand the logic in your program a bit more to get animation_running to behave in the way you want in your bigger program.

In the previous suggestion, there was an else statement that always set animation_running to false, which is not the desired behavior.

[Celerii]

Your last suggestion brings me to the situation I managed to have myself: the animation is triggered when I press the right red button but goes on when I release it. The left red button is the only way to stop it. My goal is to have it last only while the right button is pressed.

Thanks a lot for your help anyway, I do not wish to abuse of your time, this is really for fun on my side, so I hope you do not feel obliged to do all this! I will go on with this by myself: I am just a newbie in Python but I hope to find something.

Thanks again!

[dlech]

My goal is to have it last only while the right button is pressed.

So instead of checking for the left button, how about checking if the right button is not pressed?

    if Button.RIGHT not in pressed and animation_running:

[Celerii]

Yes @dlech, your solution works, thanks a lot!

For those who would be interested, here is my full script, which makes the right button animate the hub's light while pressed, and set its to red if the left button has been pressed:

    if Button.RIGHT not in pressed and hub_animation_running:
        hub.light.on(Color.GREEN)
        hub_animation_running = False

    if Button.LEFT in pressed:
        hub.light.on(Color.RED)
        hub_animation_running = False
    elif Button.RIGHT in pressed and not hub_animation_running:
        hub.light.animate([Color.RED, Color.ORANGE, Color.YELLOW, Color.GREEN, Color.CYAN, Color.BLUE, Color.VIOLET, Color.MAGENTA], interval=100)
        hub_animation_running = True

Thanks again!