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I have the resistor, GPIO24, and the LED anode connected along the same row of a breadboard. The signal from GPIO24 works as expected, but any signal from GPIO23 is lost and the LED will not light. I don't know enough about circuits to debug this.enter image description here

This is the code I'm testing with, nothing happens for the first 6 seconds. It looks like nothing happens on GPIO23.

from gpiozero import LED


led23 = LED(23)
led24 = LED(24)

led23.blink(n=3, background=False)
led24.blink(n=3, background=False)

But for whatever reason this code works and lights the LED

from gpiozero import LED


led23 = LED(23)
led23.blink(n=3, background=False)
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Since the Hi-Z option may not be available on RPi, perhaps try this alternate wiring arrangement:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

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  • I tried your solution, but it didn't work as is. I was still getting the behavior where one led wouldn't light. Probably for the same reason in the answer I just posted. – Brady Dean Sep 17 '20 at 18:01
  • In the comments, you said, I'm only allowed to use 1 resistor. What happened to that requirement? – Seamus Sep 17 '20 at 19:30
  • Oh, I forgot to get back on that. It's ok to use more than 1. Instructions were written in such a way that we could use either a RPI or Arduino. I think the 1 resistor requirement had something to do with that idk – Brady Dean Sep 17 '20 at 19:37
  • I'm glad you got this working - good for you! For future reference however you should know that most GPIO pins can be placed in a high impedance state - in other words, the device may be "HI", "LO" or "Hi-Z", aka tri-state. I don't know gpiozero, but I do know how the hardware behaves. If what you've said about gpiozero is true, it seems this is a case of the tail wagging the dog! :) – Seamus Sep 17 '20 at 19:45
  • I've been reading through the gpiozero source and essentially it's just a wrapper around RPi.GPIO and all the LED class does is call RPi.GPIO.output on the pin. I can't tell why it's not working without running through a debugger – Brady Dean Sep 17 '20 at 20:06
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I came to the conclusion there was nothing wrong with my circuit (and yes, I am now putting a 220 resistor on each led), but the problem was in software. Gpiozero doesn't work as expected when the same led is connected to 2 circuits. More specifically, I cannot have an LED object on pin 23 and 24 at the same time. My workaround is to switch out these LED objects during runtime.

from gpiozero import LED

led = LED(24)  # ref to whichever led being used

def switch_brightness():
    if led.pin.number == 24:
        led.close()
        led = LED(23)
    else:
        led.close()
        led = LED(24)

# use led, call switch_brightness when necessary
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