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Is there a way to read more than 1 port pin simultaneously (like a parallel port read) using wiringpi? I can see wiringpi functions to do a single pin read (digitalRead()) - but in my application I need to read 2+ pins at once. I guess I can read the pins directly via GPLEV0/GPLEV1 registers in the broadcom device - but ideally I'd do it via wiringpi.

Steve R
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  • What is the required latency for your application? If a dozen or so milliseconds is okay, you probably don't have to read them in literal parallel. – goldilocks Feb 17 '18 at 21:26
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    Unfortunately its sub ms (the pulses are 100 - 200ns wide or so) - I'm trying to read the state of one pin when another changes state (and read the one that changes state). I'm intending to use an interrupt from a pin change to initiate the read. From what I have read the latency can be up to 75ns - so just about doable in theory. – Steve R Feb 18 '18 at 18:29

1 Answers1

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If you look at the wiringPi source you will see there are a couple of likely functions in wiringPi.c.

digitalWriteByte

digitalReadByte

The associated comment is

/*
 * digitalWriteByte:
 * digitalReadByte:
 *      Pi Specific
 *      Write an 8-bit byte to the first 8 GPIO pins - try to do it as
 *      fast as possible.
 *      However it still needs 2 operations to set the bits, so any external
 *      hardware must not rely on seeing a change as there will be a change 
 *      to set the outputs bits to zero, then another change to set the 1's
 *      Reading is just bit fiddling.
 *      These are wiringPi pin numbers 0..7, or BCM_GPIO pin numbers
 *      17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 24, 4 on a Pi v1 rev 0-3
 *      17, 18, 27, 23, 24, 24, 4 on a Pi v1 rev 3 onwards or B+, 2, 3, zero
 *********************************************************************************
 */

You will probably need to experiment.

joan
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  • Looking at the code digitalReadByte (and digitalReadByte2) just assemble a byte by 8 independent pin reads - so its not what I'm looking for. – Steve R Feb 18 '18 at 18:38
  • That's not the full story. It uses 8 reads if you are in sysfs mode but not if you are in other modes. Are you using SYS mode? – joan Feb 18 '18 at 18:43
  • Nope - not in SYS mode. Looking at the code in more depth your right - for non WPI_MODE_GPIO_SYS mode its doing a 32bit read and then the loop is assembling 8 output bits from them. – Steve R Feb 18 '18 at 19:12