Dashboard setting for Device Configuration "GPIO states on boot" is confusing

I discovered that the tool tip in the Balena Dashboard → Device Configuration for the GPIO settings is confusing/wrong. Specifically, I’m talking about the tooltip that accompanies the Allows GPIO pins to be set to specific modes and values at boot time option.

When you enable this option and edit it, the dialog that pops up has a tool tip in it purporting to show the correct format for this setting:
image
However, if you enter the text exactly as shown (e.g. "gpio=19=op,dh","gpio=0-25=a2"), I have found that this will not correctly set the GPIO states on boot.

Rather, you have to enter the settings without the gpio= prefix. For the above, you would enter "19=op,dh","0-25=a2". I have found that this does work.

Not a big deal, but cost me some time to figure out why my GPIO settings weren’t working :smile:

Hi, thanks for catching this! I’ve shared it with the balenaCloud team and it’s been acknowledged.

Hi,

You are correct, and thanks for spotting this error! I took a look at the Supervisor codebase and the way gpio values have been handled has been this way for a while now, so this is likely just an error in the env var example provided. Here’s a PR to fix: Correct gpio example env var by cywang117 · Pull Request #1107 · balena-io/open-balena-api · GitHub

Regards,
Christina