Microbit Dinosaur Detector

It's been a while since I posted a microbit sample so here's one that would work well on the set of Jurassic Park, a dinosaur detector.

As you will know from the film, the way you know the T-Rex is approaching is by standing a glass of water on the dashboard of your stranded Jeep. As the dinosaur approaches, the vibrations from it's stamping cause ripples in the water so you know when to panic.

The accelerometer in the microbit works well as a crude vibration detector. We note the current x and y orientation of the microbit at start up and watch for a change.

from microbit import *

sleep_time = 200
warning_time = 5000

class Pinger:
    
  def __init__(self):
    self.direction = 1
    self.x = 2
    self.y = 2
     
  def update(self):
    display.set_pixel(self.x, self.y, 0)

    lhs = 0
	rhs = 4

    if self.x >= rhs:
        self.x = rhs
        self.direction = -self.direction
    elif self.x <= lhs:
        self.x = lhs
        self.direction = -self.direction
        
    self.x += self.direction
    display.set_pixel(self.x, self.y, 9) 
    
    
class DinosaurDetector:
   
  def __init__(self):
    self.horizontal_start = 0
    self.vertical_start = 0
    self.reset()
     
  def dinosaur_detected(self):
    horizontal_now = accelerometer.get_x()
    vertical_now = accelerometer.get_y()
  
    return self.horizontal_start != horizontal_now or self.vertical_start != vertical_now

  def reset(self):
    self.horizontal_start = accelerometer.get_x()
    self.vertical_start = accelerometer.get_y()


display.scroll('Dino Detector', delay=100)

detector = DinosaurDetector()
pinger = Pinger()

glass1 = Image("00000:00000:00900:00000:00000")
glass2 = Image("00000:00900:09090:00900:00000")
glass3 = Image("09990:90009:90009:90009:09990")
glass4 = Image("09090:90009:00000:90009:09090")
ripple_animation = [glass1, glass2, glass3, glass4, glass3, glass2, glass1]

while True:
  
  pinger.update()
  sleep(sleep_time)
    
  if detector.dinosaur_detected():
      detector.reset()
      display.show(ripple_animation, delay=100)
      display.show(Image.GIRAFFE)
      sleep(warning_time)
      display.clear()

The "pinger" is a battlestar galactica style roving pixel to show that the microbit is alive and monitoring it's environment for dinosaurs. The water ripple animation is there in place of the dashboard water and the giraffe icon is the closest stock image I could get to a sauropod.

This is the first time I'm trying a version of one of these examples using classes instead of exclusively inline code. I think the behaviour of the detector and the scanning "pinger" warranted a little bit extra verbosity to make the main loop a bit more compact.