Pi4J + Pibrella
The Pibrella add-on board serves as a simple and easy platform to get started with and learn about inputs and outputs on your Raspberry Pi.
Pibrella is an excellent development tool for both hobbyist and students to learn about programmatic interfacing with inputs and outputs to monitor and control things in the real world.
For beginners, three LED lights and a momentary button are provided directly on the board so you can get started playing with the input signals for the momentary button and output signals for controlling the LED lights without having to wire any circuits yourself.
One you are ready to sense (inputs) or control (outputs) other external devices you can use the 4 generic inputs and 4 generic outputs at the bottom of the Pibrella board via the 2 8-pin header connectors. (Note, breadboard/prototyping jump wires fit perfectly into these header blocks.)
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More details and instructions for getting started can be found at: http://pibrella.com/
Pi4J + Pibrella
The Pibrella documentation primarily includes information about programming the Pibrella using Python. However, we at Pi4J recognizing the Pibrella device as an excellent tool for beginners did not want to leave Java programmers out of the party. So, we have added native support for the Pibrella board directly into Pi4J.
Sources
The Pibrella devices interfaces can be found here:
https://github.com/Pi4J/pi4j/tree/develop/pi4j-device/src/main/java/com/pi4j/device/pibrella
An example program demonstrating the usage of the Pibrella device interface can be found here:
https://github.com/Pi4J/pi4j/blob/develop/pi4j-example/src/main/java/PiBrellaExample.java
Example
Below is a sample program to help you get started using the Pibrella board in your Java program.
Board Layout
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