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Electrical & Electronics Engineering vocabulary · Digital Electronics and Microcontrollers

GPIO

Meaning in electrical & electronics engineering, with examples

abbreviationCommon term

In electrical & electronics engineering, GPIO means: Short for general-purpose input/output: a microcontroller pin that firmware can set as an input to read a logic level or as an output to drive something.

In Turkish: genel amaçlı giriş/çıkış, GPIO pini

How it is used

Pronounced 'G-P-I-O'. Engineers configure a GPIO as an input or an output, set it high or low, read it, enable its internal pull-up and attach an interrupt to it. Each GPIO has a limit on the current it can source or sink.

Example sentences

  1. Configure GPIO 5 as an output and use it to switch the relay driver.

  2. We ran out of GPIOs, so we added an I/O expander on the I2C bus.

Common collocations

  • GPIO pin
  • configure a GPIO
  • set the GPIO high
  • GPIO interrupt
  • microcontrollerA small computer on a single chip, with a processor, memory and input/output peripherals. It runs firmware to control devices such as appliances, sensors and motors.
  • pull-up resistorA resistor that connects a signal line to the supply voltage so that the line stays at a defined high level when nothing is driving it, instead of floating.
  • firmwareSoftware stored in a device's non-volatile memory that controls its hardware directly, such as the program running on a microcontroller.
  • I2CA two-wire serial bus, with a data line (SDA) and a clock line (SCL), that lets a microcontroller talk to many chips, each with its own address. It is common for sensors, EEPROMs and small displays.

More terms: Digital Electronics and Microcontrollers

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