Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller • Hacker News Board

Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#1

Post by rblank » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 6:45 PM UTC

MicroLua allows programming the RP2040 microcontroller in Lua. It packages the latest Lua interpreter with bindings for the Pico SDK and a cooperative threading library.

MicroLua is licensed under the MIT license.

I wanted to learn about Lua and about the RP2040 microcontroller. This is the result :)

Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller
github.com

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#2

Post by Lyngbakr » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

This is very cool! I'm curious if it'd be relatively straightforward to use Fennel‡ with MicroLua?

‡ https://fennel-lang.org/

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#3

Post by LelouBil » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

The name made me think about Micro Lua for the Nintendo DS : https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/Micro_Lua_DS

When I was 12-13 and had an R4 for my DS, I managed to install MicroLua and program some simple apps that showed shapes when the screen was touched in specific areas.

Looking at the page, I see it even has full Wi-Fi and Local Wireless support !

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#4

Post by Evidlo » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

There's also a Lua that runs on AVRs: https://code.google.com/archive/p/ulua/

I think it's inactive now, though.

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#5

Post by squarefoot » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 11:05 PM UTC

Worth mentioning eLuaProject, seemingly abandoned now.

https://eluaproject.net/

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#6

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 11:11 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #5

Worth mentioning eLuaProject, seemingly abandoned now. https://eluaproject.net/

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#7

Post by andrewstuart » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:07 AM UTC

I can't get my head around a 1 based language.

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#8

Post by rhelz » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:31 AM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #7

I can't get my head around a 1 based language.

I can give you some tips to help; Tip #0 ..,.

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#9

Post by eichin » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

How does it do in performance/efficiency? (Lua is pretty low overhead, but I guess for something embedded like this maybe latency in responding to an input, rather than a "normal" benchmark, would make more sense?)

Re: Show HN: MicroLua – Lua for the RP2040 Microcontroller

#10

Post by askvictor » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:52 AM UTC

There is a Lua for the ESP8266 (nodeMCU) - I wonder how much difference there is