C++14 GPIO library for Raspberry Pi and other embedded systems

CppGPIO is a C++ library for the GPIOs of embedded systems like the Raspberry Pi written entirely in the modern C++ dialect C++14.

It provides a fallback to C++11 however. Please read below.

With the current source CppGPIO only works on the Pi, but it has enough abstraction to be ported to other boards.

It implements a high speed low level access on the GPIO pins of the embedded CPU, much like the C libraries like wiringPi or the bcm2835 library.

It also supports I2C communication via the Linux I2C abstraction.

Inspired by the implementation in wiringPi, it supports Soft PWM and tone outputs on all GPIO ports. Hardware PWM is supported when run as root, by addressing the registers in the bcm2835.

In addition it implements a number of hardware abstractions based on the low level model, such as PushButtons, RotaryDials, LCD displays, and other inputs and outputs.

It performs proper software debouncing on input ports. If you want to, you can modify the default parameters for the debouncing. You can also set the pullup/pulldown mode for all inputs.

The library works event based for input objects. This means that you do not have to poll for state changes of e.g. a switch, but can simply register a function from your own class that will be called from the object when the state changes. This sounds complicated but is actually quite simple with C++11/14 features like lambda expressions. The demo.cpp file has samples for this.

The speed of the library is at the upper limit of the hardware capabilities of the Raspberry Pi (2). Only 12 nanoseconds are needed to switch an output pin on or off. This results in a 44.67 Mhz square wave output just by soft control.

CppGPIO compiles with any C++11 compiler, as the only (but important) feature used from C++14 is std::make_unique<>(), and the library provides a local copy of the standard implementation of that feature. The main reason for this is that this provides support for the previous Raspian version, based on debian wheezy, once you install g++-4.8 with sudo apt-get install g++-4.8 (which is available on wheezy). On wheezy, you then need however specify the newer compiler explicitly, e.g. by changing the Makefiles supplied with this project to explicitly call g++-4.8 instead of g++ .

In result, CppGPIO is a pure C++11 library. You cannot use it from C nor from non-C++11 capable compilers.

Just clone a revision from here, and get into the source directory and type

make -j4
sudo make install
make demo

After you have installed the library and the include headers, you can simply include it into your own projects by adding

#include <cppgpio.hpp>

to the files in which you want to use the functionality. For proper linking, you have to add

-lcppgpio

to your linker arguments. It will normally be added as a shared library, but if you want to force static linking, it provides a static version as well.

All header files have fully commented public and protected methods. When using IDEs like Eclipse or XCode, you get the methods "intellisensed", with documentation. If in doubt, just look at the header files in include/cppgpio/. In the following days I may be adding doxygen generated documentation from the source files.

The only GPIO model is currently the BCM2835 as used in the Raspberry Pi boards. It adapts automatically to the various versions (I have it only tested though on a B, A+, and 2 B). The code itself should compile fine on any OS with a C++14 compiler. I typically develop and test build my projects on OSX with XCode, and then copy them to the Pi. This works because the GPIO automatically switches to simulation mode when not on Linux (or can be forced to do with Linux, too).

CppGPIO is open source. The terms of the BSD license apply. Copyright (c) 2016 Joachim Schurig.

The following examples are taken from demo.cpp in this project.

#include <chrono>
#include <cppgpio.hpp>

using namespace GPIO;

int main()
{
  // use gpio #18

  DigitalOut out(18);
  
  // switch output to logical 1 (3.3V)

  out.on();
  
  // wait some time
  
  std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(1));
  
  // switch it off again
  
  out.off();

  return 0;
}

When DigitalOut goes out of scope, the port is automatically reset to input mode and any resource associated with it is freed

In the following example we output a PWM signal to a port, not regarding if it will be generated by a hardware PWM circuit or by the software emulation, which is a function of the port number and the initialisation mode.

It could e.g. dim a LED on and off.

#include <chrono>
#include <cppgpio.hpp>

using namespace GPIO;

int main()
{
  // create PWM on GPIO 23, set range to 100, inital value to 0
  
  PWMOut pwm(23, 100, 0);
  
  // now dim a LED 20 times from off to on to off
  
  for (int l = 0; l < 20; ++l) {
  
    for (int p = 0; p < 100; ++p) {
      pwm.set_ratio(p);
      std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(5));
    }
    
    for (int p = 100; p > 0; --p) {
      pwm.set_ratio(p);
      std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(5));
    }
    
  }
  
  return 0;
}

In the following example we use the event driven approach with a rotary dial with integrated push button. We connect callables (in this case member functions of the Rotary1 class) to the rotary and button classes, and have them called whenever an event occurs. Remark there is no polling, and no control loop.

#include <string>
#include <chrono>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <cppgpio.hpp>

using namespace GPIO;


class Rotary1 {
public:
    Rotary1()
    : lcd(4, 20, "/dev/i2c-1", 0x27)
    , dial(6, 12, GPIO_PULL::UP)
    , push(5, GPIO_PULL::UP)
    {
        lcd.fill();
        lcd.write(0, 0, "Please dial me!");
        lcd.write(1, 0, "Will exit at #42");

        // register a lambda function at the dial to connect it to this class

        dial.f_dialed = [&](bool up, long value) { dialed(up, value); };

        // could also use std::bind():
        // dial.f_dialed = std::bind(&Rotary1::dialed, this, std::placeholders::_1, std::placeholders::_2);

        push.f_pushed = [&]() { pushed(); };

        push.f_released = [&](std::chrono::nanoseconds nano) { released(nano); };

        // after finishing the initialization of the event driven input objects
        // start the event threads of the input objects

        dial.start();
        push.start();
    }

private:
    HitachiLCD lcd;
    RotaryDial dial;
    PushButton push;
    
    void dialed(bool up, long value)
    {
        std::string out = "Value: ";
        out += std::to_string(value);
        lcd.write(0, 0, out);

        if (value == 42) {
            lcd.write(0, 0, "Goodbye");
            lcd.write(1, 0, "");
            std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::seconds(2));
            lcd.backlight(false);
            exit(0);
        }
    }
    
    void pushed()
    {
        lcd.write(1, 0, "Button: pushed");
    }
    
    void released(std::chrono::nanoseconds nano)
    {
        lcd.write(1, 0, "Button: released");
    }
    
};



int main()
{

  Rotary1 rotary;

  // the rotary object will function properly on any
  // event alltough the main thread will now sleep for an hour
  
  std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::hours(1));
  
  return 0;
}

When Rotary1 goes out of scope, all GPIO objects used inside are properly reset and freed.