LEDs will only work if power is supplied the correct way round (i.e. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, and glows when electricity (current) is passed through it. The shorter leg (known as the ‘ cathode’) is connected to the negative side of the power supply, known as ‘ground’. The longer leg (known as the ‘ anode’), is always connected to the positive supply of the circuit. When you pick up the LED, you will notice that one leg is longer than the other. In the middle, the columns of holes are connected together with a break in the middle (which comes in handy if you straddle a chip or similar component across the two sides, allowing you to connect to both sides of a chip with wires, without the chip's legs connecting together) The LED The same goes for the matching two blue/red rows of holes at the bottom of the breadboard. And so are the second row of holes, marked with a blue line.

With the breadboard in the CamJam EduKit, the top row of holes are all connected together, marked with a red line. The holes on the breadboard are connected as follows: They are often used to test ('prototype') a circuit design before making a final version of a project, whether that be soldering wires together or creating a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). The breadboard is a convenient way to connect electronic components to each other without having to solder them together. You can get all of these items, and more, in our CamJam EduKit, which teaches you more about LEDs, buzzers and switches, and includes all the hardware and eight well-written worksheets about using the GPIO pins on your Raspberry Pi. In addition to a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS, you will need: In this tutorial we are going to show you how to light an LED with these GPIO pins - a nice simple first project for any Raspberry Pi owner! What you will need

With a little programming, you can then control them or detect what they are doing. They are the little pins sticking out of the circuit board which allow you to plug various devices into your Raspberry Pi - anything from sensors to displays. One of the biggest selling points of the Raspberry Pi is the GPIO, or General Purpose Input/Output pins.

Fritzing 40 pin raspberry pi header