GPIO usage with PC (USB)?

Currently I’m running openHAB on a Raspberry PI 3, but in terms of reliability and “power” (had to deinstall Grafana/InfluxDB already because it slowed down everything dramatically) so I want to switch to a new, powerful platform. I was thinking of getting a fanless mini PC, but one thing prevents me from doing it: Currently I use 433MHz TX/RX modules which are directly attached to the GPIO board on my Raspberry.

My question is: How could I connect such a module to a PC which has only USB ports to offer?

P.S.: Please no debate on principles like if RPi is good enough or not - thanks!

The new ODroid C4 might have enough power for what you want, as well as the Raspberry Pi 4, they both have GPio pins on board.

I’d be very interested to hear about any USB dongles that provide GPio style connections for bigger platforms.


Is there an Arduino style board that could act as an outboard GPio interface over USB ?

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As far as I know, you can’t really. Not directly. You can use Stuart’s recommendation and connect it to an Arduino but you’ll have to program the code that talks to the Arduino and call that from OH using the executeCommandLine/Exec binding or using the Serial binding.

Or you can leave the RPi and create some sort of script that listens for commands/publishes updates (MQTT is a popular choice) to communicate with OH running on another machine.

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In what way? Is the Raspberry sending serial data, or just simulating a pushbutton?