Starting off with LC & Raspberry Pi's

[Earp Robert J.]

I’ve been tinkering with my grandkids of late getting them going on basic electronics (H/W) and mousing around with rudimentary programming.  I guess I should have thought at the start that the two would get together at some point, but at the beginning it was a case of explaining the fundamentals of what I was doing with electronics in the workshop, primarily fixing things.  The idea of programming came after discovering the great  Everything Machine app (from Tinybop) for an iPad which then led to showing how the grandkids could use LC to do more stuff.  I figure they need to learn how to control the world through the Internet of Things before somebody else controls them, not that they don’t need controlling at times along with their grandfather ;-)

The H/W side of things has got to the point of considering adding some intelligence and I was going the route of PLC’s, and separately an Arduino, but of course programming those is not as fun as in LC or as easy.  So, when seeing Monty’s mergeBLE announcement I thought great, the Arduino’s and LC can go together.  I’m sure that will be the case in the long term but it needs a wrapper around it before us plebes will achieve productivity before inept frustration sets in.

Then through chance I stumbled across Fraser Gordon’s 2013 announcement of LC running on a Raspberry Pi which then led me to wonder if that combination allows LC to talk to the physical outside world, that is, through the Pi’s I/O.   Unfortunately I cannot find much more information except for the LC Forum where I can’t find anything fundamental about LC & R-Pi’s, but Fraser’s article did say to post questions on this list, so that’s why you are reading it here.

So, here’s some Q’s that I’m hoping somebody can answer, or at least point me in the direction of where the answers may be.  Also, if there is a better/more appropriate list for this subject, I’d appreciate knowing that too.

Q. Can LC and the Pi’s I/O communicate ?  If so, is that native or through an extension ?

Q. Can you run stand-alone’s on the Pi ?

Q. LC v6.5.1seems to be the latest version of LC that will run on the Pi, which is fine, but is there any likelihood of future releases being made ?

Q. Is there is a better/more appropriate list, than this one, for the subject of LC and Raspberry Pi’s ?

Q. Can you suggest any more resources to look at ?


Many thanks, Bob…

Bob Earp
White Rock, British Columbia.