Example 02

Variables

By Kevin McAleer,    2 Minutes

Let’s do something more interesting.

We’ll make the Raspberry Pi Pico (or whichever board you are using) ask us a question, then reply back to us.

name.py

Type of the program below into your Python Editor

# Variables
# name.py

print("Please type your name:")
name = input()
print("Hello", name)

Save the file and then run it by pressing the green run button.

The name variable holds the value that it is assigned, and we assigned it by using the = equals sign.

The function input, is another built-in function that MicroPython provides to get user input from the keyboard and return it to our program.

The variable is like a box that we can put things in, in this case a persons name.

Numbers

We can also store numbers in variables; let’s extend our example and add an extra question

type:

name = input('hello, please enter your name > ')
age = input('please enter your age > ')
print('hello', name, 'how does', age, 'feel?')

Note

input() only returns text (str) types of data, this means if you try to do any math with the age it will not work in the way you expect.

If you want age to be a number you will too to wrap it in the int() type to change it.

E.g.

age = int(input('please enter your age >'))
print('next year you will be', age + 1, 'years old')

This is called casting and we’ll look at this in more depth in later modules.

We can use variables in maths, for example if we want to find the missing angle in a triangle, and we have the other two angles we can use a formula: 180 - a + b = c

type:

a = 65
b = 42
c = 180 - a + b 
print('the missing angle is: ', c)