PL2303 and CP2103 Userspace GPIO control tools

This is a set of small tools for linux userspace that allows you to interact with GPIO lines on PL2303HX and CP2103 devices. PL2303: It has only been tested on PL2303HXA, but may work for other revisions. CP2103: It has only been tested on CP2103, but may work for other revisions/versions.

Since no common GPIO driver for those exists at the time of writing in the linux kernel - this should serve as a placeholder till upstream guys fix that.

Compiling & installing

You'll need libusb-1.0-dev, gcc and pkg-config. Just run

make 
sudo make install

##Installing udev rules (Linux only)

This package comes with udev rules that will be dropped into your /etc/udev/rules.d/

To automagically install and reload rules run

sudo make install-rules

and replug your pl2303/cp2103 dongles. You should no longer need root permissions to access gpio in them.

Do I have to close minicom / rmmod pl2303 to use this tool ?

Nope. Just run it in a separate terminal whenever you need it

Can I chose which of 70 PL2303 devices plugged this will work with?

Yep. You can specify --product, --serial and --manuf strings to match the device you want. These must precede any other options. Example:

./cp2303gpio --product=PowerUART --serial=fireblade --gpio 0 --out 1

Usage

CP2103

PL2303HXA/CP2103 userspace GPIO control tool
(c) Andrew 'Necromant' Andrianov 2014, License: GPLv3
Usage: ./cp2103gpio [action1] [action2] ...
Options are: 
         --product=blah    - Use device with this 'product' string
         --serial=blah     - Use device with this 'serial' string
         --manuf=blah      - Use device with this 'manufacturer' string
         -g/--gpio  n      - select GPIO, n=0, 1
         -i/--in           - configure GPIO as input
         -o/--out v        - configure GPIO as output with value v
         -r/--read v       - Read current GPIO value

         -s/--sleep v      - Delay for v ms

Examples: 
        ./cp2103gpio --gpio=1 --out 1
        ./cp2103gpio --gpio=0 --out 0 --gpio=1 --in

All arguments are executed from left to right, you can add 
delays using --sleep v option. e.g. 
        ./cp2103gpio --gpio=0 --out 0 --sleep 1000 --gpio=0 --out 1

PL2303

PL2303HXA/CP2103 userspace GPIO control tool
(c) Andrew 'Necromant' Andrianov 2014, License: GPLv3
Usage: ./pl2303gpio [action1] [action2] ...
Options are: 
         --product=blah    - Use device with this 'product' string
         --serial=blah     - Use device with this 'serial' string
         --manuf=blah      - Use device with this 'manufacturer' string
         -g/--gpio  n      - select GPIO, n=0, 1
         -i/--in           - configure GPIO as input
         -o/--out v        - configure GPIO as output with value v
         -r/--read v       - Read current GPIO value

         -s/--sleep v      - Delay for v ms

Examples: 
        ./pl2303gpio --gpio=1 --out 1
        ./pl2303gpio --gpio=0 --out 0 --gpio=1 --in

All arguments are executed from left to right, you can add 
delays using --sleep v option. e.g. 
        ./pl2303gpio --gpio=0 --out 0 --sleep 1000 --gpio=0 --out 1

Limitations

cp2303 code misses magic required for 'input' mode of GPIO lines.

Tips and tricks

The arguments are executed from left to right. Therefore you can use only one call to pl2303gpio/cp2303gpio to execute a sequence of actions. If the gpio line stays the same, you can omit subsequent --gpio arguments. You can use --sleep to add arbitary delays (in milliseconds)

Example (sets the gpio3 line to 1, sleeps for one second, sets the gpio3 to 0:

./cp2303gpio --gpio=3 --out=1 --sleep=1000 --out=0

##Bonus scripts The 'extra' directory contains a few scripts I use on my OpenWRT box to manage a few SBC servers. They are installed via install-scripts.

serverctl - is a bach script that allows quickly to power on/power off/reboot/access minicom on any of the boxes by just supplying the hostname (which is also wired into cp2303 onboard eeprom as 'serial number').
serverd - is a lua daemon that pings servers in round-robin fasion and displays their state on LEDs

Mac OS X hint

These tools have been reported to work on Mac OS X. For obvious reasons you don't need udev rules on a mac.

License

GPLv3. I'm too lazy to copy all the text here. Google for it.

nekromant/pl2303gpio