GPIOEmu

GPIOEmu is a python module able to emulate some functions of the RPi.GPIO module.

How to install it

You need a UNIX-like system to run this emulator, such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD... It will not work on Micro$oft Windows, but it is designed to be easy to port (it mostly uses the standard library or cross-plateform libraries).

Dependencies:

• Python 2 or 3 (yes, it runs with both, as the RPi.GPIO module)
• SDL 2 library

Run, as root:

# apt-get install libsdl2-dev # Install the SDL 2 library
# python3 setup.py install # Install the GPIOEmu python extension

How to use it

Create any program using the RPi.GPIO. Now you can test it on any computer having GPIOEmu installed by replacing the RPi.GPIO import by the GPIOEmu import.
For example, you may replace import RPi.GPIO by import GPIOEmu as RPi.GPIO, or import RPi.GPIO as GPIO by import GPIOEmu as GPIO.
You do not need to change the rest of your program, now you can run it (except in some cases, listed in the "Differences with the RPI.GPIO module" section).

When GPIOEmu is imported, a window is opened, and it is closed when your program exits. Do not try to click on the window cross button to close it, it will not work ; simply send a SIGTERM or a SIGINT to your program instead.

Output pins are set by default to UNKNOWN STATE, which says that in reality, in could be any.

To change the state of input pins, click on its value in the GUI.

The GPIO is for the moment always rev 3, but the code is already designed to be able to work with rev 1 or rev 2, so an element in the GUI to choose the revision will be introduced soon.

Differences with the RPi.GPIO module

• The PWM is being implemented, but is not usable yet.
• The interrupt functions are not available yet.
• The RPi.GPIO module provides a RPI_INFO dictionary containing 6 fields. This dictionary is also providded by GPIOEmu, but it contains only one field (P1_REVISION), also accessible as the RPI_REVISION deprecated variable (provided both by RPi.GPIO and GPIOEmu).
• The RPi.GPIO module is able to tell you many more modes using gpio_mode(). This function of the GPIOEmu module returns either INPUT or OUTPUT (or -1), or, soon, PWM.

Bugs

• The GUI is sometimes laggy (but always working).
• There should not be multi-thread mutual access bug, however these bugs always have a very low chance of happening, so there might be still undiscovered bugs of this kind. If you find one, please report it by creating an issue on the GitHub repository.