WiringPi Library

Welcome to the WiringPi Library, the highly performant GPIO access library for Raspberry Pi boards. This library is written in C and is designed to provide fast and efficient control of the GPIO pins by directly accessing the hardware registers using DMA.

Key Features:

• Support: WiringPi supports all Raspberry Pi Boards including Pi 5 ( 🚧 On the Pi 5, only the GCLK functionality is currently not supported due to missing documentation of the RP1 chip).
• High Performance: By directly accessing the hardware registers, WiringPi ensures minimal latency and maximum performance for your GPIO operations.
• Wide Adoption: WiringPi is widely used in numerous projects, making it a reliable choice for your Raspberry Pi GPIO needs.

Whether you’re working on a simple LED blink project or a complex automation system, WiringPi provides the tools you need to get the job done efficiently.

How to use

To compile programs with wiringPi Library, you need to include wiringPi.h as well as link against wiringPi:

#include <wiringPi.h> // Include WiringPi library!

int main(void)
{
  // uses BCM numbering of the GPIOs and directly accesses the GPIO registers.
  wiringPiSetupGpio();

  // pin mode ..(INPUT, OUTPUT, PWM_OUTPUT, GPIO_CLOCK)
  // set pin 17 to input
  pinMode(17, INPUT);

  // pull up/down mode (PUD_OFF, PUD_UP, PUD_DOWN) => down
  pullUpDnControl(17, PUD_DOWN);

  // get state of pin 17
  int value = digitalRead(17);

  if (HIGH == value)
  {
    // your code
  }
}

To compile this code, link against wiringPi:

gcc -o myapp myapp.c -l wiringPi

Be sure to check out the examples, build them using Make:

cd examples
make <example-name | really-all>

The tool gpio can be used to set single pins as well as get the state of everything at once:

pi@wiringdemo:~ $ gpio readall
 +-----+-----+---------+------+---+---Pi 3B--+---+------+---------+-----+-----+
 | BCM | wPi |   Name  | Mode | V | Physical | V | Mode | Name    | wPi | BCM |
 +-----+-----+---------+------+---+----++----+---+------+---------+-----+-----+
 |     |     |    3.3v |      |   |  1 || 2  |   |      | 5v      |     |     |
 |   2 |   8 |   SDA.1 |   IN | 1 |  3 || 4  |   |      | 5v      |     |     |
 |   3 |   9 |   SCL.1 |   IN | 1 |  5 || 6  |   |      | 0v      |     |     |
 |   4 |   7 | GPIO. 7 |   IN | 0 |  7 || 8  | 0 | IN   | TxD     | 15  | 14  |
 |     |     |      0v |      |   |  9 || 10 | 1 | IN   | RxD     | 16  | 15  |
 |  17 |   0 | GPIO. 0 |   IN | 1 | 11 || 12 | 1 | IN   | GPIO. 1 | 1   | 18  |
 |  27 |   2 | GPIO. 2 |   IN | 1 | 13 || 14 |   |      | 0v      |     |     |
 |  22 |   3 | GPIO. 3 |   IN | 1 | 15 || 16 | 0 | IN   | GPIO. 4 | 4   | 23  |
 |     |     |    3.3v |      |   | 17 || 18 | 1 | IN   | GPIO. 5 | 5   | 24  |
 |  10 |  12 |    MOSI |   IN | 0 | 19 || 20 |   |      | 0v      |     |     |
 |   9 |  13 |    MISO |   IN | 0 | 21 || 22 | 1 | IN   | GPIO. 6 | 6   | 25  |
 |  11 |  14 |    SCLK |   IN | 0 | 23 || 24 | 1 | IN   | CE0     | 10  | 8   |
 |     |     |      0v |      |   | 25 || 26 | 0 | IN   | CE1     | 11  | 7   |
 |   0 |  30 |   SDA.0 |   IN | 1 | 27 || 28 | 1 | IN   | SCL.0   | 31  | 1   |
 |   5 |  21 | GPIO.21 |   IN | 0 | 29 || 30 |   |      | 0v      |     |     |
 |   6 |  22 | GPIO.22 |   IN | 0 | 31 || 32 | 1 | IN   | GPIO.26 | 26  | 12  |
 |  13 |  23 | GPIO.23 |   IN | 1 | 33 || 34 |   |      | 0v      |     |     |
 |  19 |  24 | GPIO.24 |   IN | 1 | 35 || 36 | 1 | IN   | GPIO.27 | 27  | 16  |
 |  26 |  25 | GPIO.25 |   IN | 1 | 37 || 38 | 1 | IN   | GPIO.28 | 28  | 20  |
 |     |     |      0v |      |   | 39 || 40 | 1 | IN   | GPIO.29 | 29  | 21  |
 +-----+-----+---------+------+---+----++----+---+------+---------+-----+-----+
 | BCM | wPi |   Name  | Mode | V | Physical | V | Mode | Name    | wPi | BCM |
 +-----+-----+---------+------+---+---Pi 3B--+---+------+---------+-----+-----+

Installing

You can either build it yourself or use the prebuilt binaries:

From Source

1. create debian-package

# fetch the source
sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi.git
cd WiringPi

# build the package
./build debian
mv debian-template/wiringpi-3.0-1.deb .

# install it
sudo apt install ./wiringpi-3.0-1.deb

Prebuilt Binaries

Grab the latest release from here.

Unzip/use the portable prebuilt verison:

# unzip the archive
tar -xfv wiringpi_3.0.tar.gz

Install the debian package:

# install a dpkg
sudo apt install ./wiringpi-3.0-1.deb

Ports

wiringPi has been wrapped for multiple languages:

• Node - https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi-Node
• Perl - https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi-Perl
• PHP - https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi-PHP
• Python - https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi-Python
• Ruby - https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi-Ruby

Support

Please use the issue system of GitHub.

If you’re not sure whether to create an issue or not, please engage in discussions!

Please do not email Gordon or @Gadgetoid.

Please don’t email GC2 for reporting issues, you might contact us for anything that’s not meant for the public.

History

This repository is the continuation of ‘Gordon’s wiringPi 2.5’ which has been deprecated, a while ago.

• The last “old wiringPi” source of Gordon’s release can be found at the final_source_2.50 tag.
• The default master branch contains code that has been written since version 2.5 to provide support for newer hardware as well as new features.

ℹ️️ Since 2024, GC2 has taken over maintenance of the project, supporting new OS versions as well as current hardware generations. We are dedicated to keeping the arguably best-performing GPIO Library for Raspberry Pi running smoothly. We strive to do our best, but please note that this is a community effort, and we cannot provide any guarantees or take responsibility for implementing specific features you may need.

Debug

WIRINGPI_DEBUG=1 ./my_wiringpi_program

WIRINGPI_DEBUG=1 gpio readall