Today I’ll show you how to Toggle Raspberry Pi GPIO Pins with ASP.NET Core 2.0.

First be aware of the following prerequisites:

  • .NET Core 2.0 SDK
  • A Raspberry Pi 3 Running Raspbian
  • Install linux dependencies: sudo apt-get install curl libunwind8 gettext

Now let’s start:

Create a folder for your new project

Open a command prompt an run:

1mkdir aspnet.webapi.rpi.gpio
2cd aspnet.webapi.rpi.gpio

Create an ASP.NET Core Web API project

Create an ASP.NET Core Web API project with the following command:

1dotnet new webapi

Add a reference to Unosquare.Raspberry.IO

1dotnet add package Unosquare.Raspberry.IO

Now restore the packages:

1dotnet restore

Create BlinkyController.cs

In the Controllers folder, create a BlinkyController.cs file with the following contents:

 1using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
 2using Unosquare.RaspberryIO;
 3using Unosquare.RaspberryIO.Gpio;
 4
 5namespace aspnet.webapi.rpi.gpio.Controllers
 6{
 7    [Route("api/[controller]")]
 8    public class BlinkyController : Controller
 9    {
10        [HttpPost]
11        public void Post([FromBody]bool isOn)
12        {
13            // Control GPIO pin 5
14            var pin = Pi.Gpio.Pin05;
15            pin.PinMode = GpioPinDriveMode.Output;
16            pin.Write(!isOn);
17        }
18    }
19}

Note: The sample toggles GPIO pin 5.

Publish the application

Publish the application with the following commands:

1dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-arm

Copy the files to your Raspberry

Copy the contents of the folder \aspnet.on.rpi\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.0\linux-arm\publish to the Raspberry (i.e. /home/pi/publish)

Note: For this task I connect to the Raspberry via SFTP using WinSCP

Run the application

Connect to Raspberry using ssh and then run the following commands:

1sudo -i
2cd /home/pi/publish
3chmod +x aspnet.webapi.rpi.gpio
4export ASPNETCORE_URLS="http://*:5000"
5./aspnet.webapi.rpi.gpio

Note: Unosquare.Raspberry.IO must be run with elevated privileges.

Call the Web API to Toggle the GPIO pin

Post data to the Web API to toggle the GPIO pin.

To turn it on:

1curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d 'true' http://[ip of your raspberry]:5000/api/blinky

To Turn it off:

1curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d 'false' http://[ip of your raspberry]:5000/api/blinky

Get the code here.

Hope it helps!