Beaglebone: GPIO Programming on ARM Embedded Linux

Note: This video was made before the Linux device tree was implemented on the beaglebone (beaglebone black uses Linux ). I have a new video coming in a few days that explains how to do the same thing on the beaglebone black using device tree overlays. In this video I extend my series on introducing the Beaglebone and developing applications using embedded Linux to demonstrate how we can build an application that uses its GPIOs (General Purpose Input/Outputs). The example demonstrates a simple LED output circuit and a simple pushbutton input circuit that we can connect to the Beaglebone GPIOs directly. I then go through the steps on how we can configure and access these GPIOs using Sysfs in embedded linux and then demonstrate how we can write a C/C program that works directly with these pins. Finally I demonstrate how we can use polling to wait for a GPIO input such as a button press or key press. This application is relevant to all flavours of embedded Linux. The code that the final application is