GPIO
Last updated
Last updated
General-purpose input/output (GPIO) is a generic pin on an integrated circuit or computer board whose behavior—including whether it is an input or output pin—is controllable by the user at run time.
Hardware Perspective
One powerful feature of the Raspberry Pi is the row of GPIO (general purpose input/output) pins along the top edge of the board.
The comprehensive GPIO Pinout guide for the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi offers up its GPIO over a standard male header on the board. Over the years the header has expanded from 26 pins to 40 pins while maintaining the original pinout.
One of the great things about the Raspberry Pi is that it has a GPIO connector to which you can attach external hardware.
The Raspberry Pi GPIOs can be controlled using many programming languages.
Operating System Perspective
GPIO Sysfs Interface for Userspace. Platforms which use the "gpiolib" implementors framework may choose to configure a sysfs user interface to GPIOs. This is different from the debugfs interface, since it provides control over GPIO direction and value instead of just showing a gpio state summary. Plus, it could be present on production systems without debugging support.