Potentiometer

A potentiometer provides an analogue input, which means that it can provide a range of input values, not just 0 and 1 like a digital input like a button.

Use it to control things you want to vary over a range of values, such as the speed of a motor, the intensity of a light and much more!

Quick Reference

Wiring

Use a GVS cable to connect the sensor. This has 3 wires, blue, red and black:

Wire up as follows, using the Edge Connector or Motor Controller board:

Potentiometer	Microbit
3-pin connector	P0 3-pin connector

You don't have to use pin P0. You can use any analogue pin. Just remember to adjust your code accordingly.

Coding

Enter this code in forever:

The Serial blocks can be found in Advanced.

Download the code to the microbit.

To see the data, click on Show data Device:

You should see some numbers and a graph. These show the position of the potentiometer knob. Rotate the knob and watch the values change:

You can use these values to control other things. For example, in the code below, we can use this to control the bar graph function of the Microbit:

In the above code, the map block takes the potentiometer value, which is in the range 0 to 1023, and uses it to plot a bar chart on the LED display:

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