Raspberry Pi GPIO bit-banged GPIB/IEEE-488 adapters
A small driver that turns the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi into an IEEE-488 (GPIB) controller, the classic instrument-control bus used by oscilloscopes, signal generators, and lab gear since the 1970s. It is the software side of low-cost hobbyist and lab adapters such as Lightside Instruments' gpib4pi board, which simply wires GPIB lines to Pi header pins and lets the CPU bit-bang the protocol.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as a niche option: it only entered mainline in late 2025 as part of the linux-gpib destaging effort and already received maintainer cleanup in early 2026, so it is actively cared for rather than abandoned. The compatible hardware (Raspberry Pi boards and the gpib4pi adapter) is still sold new, but the upstream Linux-GPIB project flags this bit-bang approach as Pi-only with functional limitations, so real-world deployments will be small numbers of lab and hobbyist users rather than a broad install base.
repository signals
sources
- patch.msgid.link
The driver entered mainline in late 2025 as part of the linux-gpib destaging work, so it is newly upstream rather than abandoned legacy code.
- patch.msgid.link
The directory received a substantive maintainer cleanup in January 2026, indicating continued upstream attention after destaging.
- lightside-instruments.com
A current commercial gpib4pi board is offered for sale/backorder and is described as compatible with the gpib_bitbang driver.
- pip.raspberrypi.com
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B product materials were updated through 2025-10-06 and 2026-04-01, supporting that compatible Raspberry Pi host hardware remains current.
- linux-gpib.sourceforge.io
Linux-GPIB documents this as a Raspberry Pi-only GPIO bitbang adapter with notable functional limits, implying a niche deployment profile rather than broad general-purpose use.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Shell inspection of local source shows a real module driver for Raspberry Pi GPIO-based IEEE-488/GPIB adapters. The two patch.msgid.link URLs were obtained from local `git show` Link tags for the destaging commit and the January 2026 follow-up cleanup; I found no evidence of an upstream removal series. Web search/open provided the Lightside gpib4pi product page and Raspberry Pi product portal, which show matching hardware still available/current in 2025-2026. Web search/open also provided Linux-GPIB supported-hardware docs showing the driver is limited to Raspberry Pi bitbang controller use, so deployments are likely low and specialized. Because the driver is new upstream, still maintained, and tied to still-sold niche hardware, removal/deprecation is not justified; annotate as niche instead.