Okay, so I spent some time messing around with this ‘v blink’ idea I had. Just wanted to see if I could get a little light blinking using the V language. Seemed simple enough, right?
Getting Started
First thing, I dug out my old Raspberry Pi. It was sitting in a box, collecting dust. Had to blow it off. Then I hunted down an LED – found a red one – and a resistor. You always need a resistor, learned that the hard way once.
I wired it all up. Put the long leg of the LED into one of the Pi’s GPIO pins, I think it was pin 17. The short leg went through the resistor and then to a ground pin. Pretty standard setup, nothing fancy.
The Software Part – Attempt 1
Hardware looked okay. Time for the code. I decided to try the V language. People say it’s fast and simple. So, I installed V on the Pi. Took a few minutes, following the steps online.
Then I tried writing the blink code. Found some bits and pieces online about V and GPIO. Typed it up, trying to make the pin go high, wait, go low, wait. Compiled it. V said it was okay.
Ran the program. And… nothing happened. The little red LED just sat there, dark. Kinda annoying. Checked my code. Checked the pin number. Still nothing.
Figuring it Out
Okay, maybe it wasn’t V’s fault. Maybe my wiring was bad? Or the LED was dead? To be sure, I decided to test the circuit with Python first. I know Python works for this stuff on the Pi.
Whipped up a tiny Python script:
- Import the GPIO library
- Set up the pin
- Loop forever: turn pin on, wait, turn pin off, wait
Ran the Python script. And boom! The LED started blinking perfectly. On, off, on, off. Okay, so the hardware was fine. That was a relief. The problem was definitely in my V code or how V talks to the GPIO pins.
Back to V – Success!
Felt a bit silly using Python just to test, but hey, it worked. Now, back to V. I tossed out my first attempt. Searched again and found a slightly different, maybe simpler V example for GPIO control. Maybe the first one I found was outdated or just wrong.
Typed in the new V code carefully. Compiled it again. Crossed my fingers. Ran it.
It worked! This time, the V program made the LED blink. Just a nice, steady pulse. On for a second, off for a second. Success! My little ‘v blink’ project was done.
So yeah, took a bit more fiddling than I expected, jumping between languages. But got there in the end. Sometimes the simple things take the most messing around. Pretty satisfying to see that little light blinking away, controlled by V.
