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Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout: What Each Pin Does on Pi 4, Earlier Models | Tom's Hardware

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Clipped on: 2021-10-24

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Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout: What Each Pin Does on Pi 4, Earlier Models

By June 16, 2020

The Raspberry Pi has 40 GPIO pins that connect to sensors, lights, motors and other devices

The best thing about any Raspberry Pi, including the new Raspberry Pi 4, is that you can use it to build all kinds of awesome contraptions, from robots to retro gaming consoles and fart detectors. Most of the sensors, motors, lights and other peripherals that make these projects possible connect to the Pi's set of GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) pins. These pins offer a direct connection to the System on Chip (SoC) at the heart of the Pi, enabling the Pi to communicate with external components. Every Pi model since the Raspberry Pi B+ has had 40 GPIO pins, though on the Pi Zero and Zero W, you have 40 holes that you can solder pins or wires into.

This guide has been updated to reflect the new capabilities of the Raspberry Pi 4, which still comes with 40 GPIO pins, but has a few extra I2C, SPI and UART connections available.

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Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".
Topics
  • DotNetMaster777
    Very nice and useful article !!
    Reply
  • MatsK
    It has a serious error.

    The operating voltage of the GPIO pins is 3.3v with a maximum current draw of 16mA. This means that we can safely power one or two LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) from a single GPIO pin, via a resistor.
    The typical values for a 3 or 5mm LED is 1,8-3volt and 20mA depending...
    Read More Reply
  • seamusdemora
    SCL4 (I2C clock) appears on two different pins:
    pin 26 (GPIO 7)
    pin 21 (GPIO 9)

    There are other errors - are you confused - or is it me??
    Reply
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