Use a Raspberry Pi plus a temperature sensor to talk to a PS Vita Display
Show the Outside Temperature
© Lead Image © Hermin Utomo, 123RF.com
Lua is an interesting Python alternative for small embedded machines that are not sufficiently powerful to run Python scripts. Create Lua socket client/server scripts to send outside temperatures between a Pi and a PS Vita display.
The Lua programming language [1] is often viewed as mainly a video game scripting language, because many popular games such as Angry Birds, Roblox, and World of Warcraft use it. But Lua scripts run extremely fast, making Lua a good option for many small embedded systems where Python isn't supported or may have performance issues.
In this article, I'll introduce Lua by letting it fight Python in a simple performance test that compares startup times. Next, I'll look at some good application fits for Lua, and I'll finish with a small home project that uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W that sends weather data to a PlayStation (PS) Vita handheld gaming console.
Before jumping into a Lua solution, it's important to consider the pros and cons. On the positive side, systems like laptops and Raspberry Pis can have Lua initial call-ups 10 times faster than with Python. For very low-end systems with memory constraints, you may see Lua starting more than 30 times faster than Python. On the negative side, Lua doesn't have the vast libraries, documentation, or user support that is available for Python. For small embedded systems that only require base functionality Lua can be a good fit. However, for large or complex coding projects Python will typically be the better choice.
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