BrickPi3 + RaspberryPi3B+ HELP

BrickPi
1

Hi there,

First and foremost, I am happy to join this creative community!
I am currently at the beginnings of a very ambitious project: I want to build a car manufacturing supply chain with an assembly unit. My model will have 2 suppliers (vertical warehouses), one assembly unit and a Lego PowerFunctions train to connect the different modules.
The orchestration of all the different production steps will be done in the cloud. This is why I chose to go for the BrickPi since the Raspberry gives me easy connectivity.

UNFORTUNATELY, I am having problems with the new Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and the Jessie distribution. I have read that it is not supported and that it only works with Stretch. However, I find little information about utilizing Stretch to program my BrickPi.

Thus, I have a couple of questions and I am sure you can help me figure out the best setup:

– Should I send back my Raspberry Pi B+ and buy the older model B, go with the Jessie distribution and have the least problems?
– Or is it safe to use Stretch with the new Raspberry Pi and I shouldn’t bother with the “outdated” versions?
– I want to program my robots in Python. From my first glance I found the ev3dev library to be way more intuitive and complete than the BrickPi library that is used in the Python examples that come with the Jessie distribution. Is this a false impression? Which one is more suitable for this project considering that I will be working with students that have limited programming skills?
– If I want to use ev3dev it will not run on neither Jessie or Stretch, right? I need to flash the ev3dev distribution and will not have a visual interface, right? Would this solution limit me with my integration into the cloud later?

I hope you can help me make the right choices from the beginning and not realize half way into the project that I went with the wrong setup :slight_smile:

Thanks !!
raphmc

2

Hello @raphmc

The new Pi3B+ absolutely requires the latest Stretch version to work. We are coming up with our own version of Raspbian for Robots that will be up to date. In fact we have a beta out ready for download
You don’t need to return anything.

You also have the option of just taking the Stretch image from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and install the BrickPi3 files on that image. This will make Python programming available to you.
sudo curl -kL dexterindustries.com/update_brickpi3 | bash

Using our Raspbian for Robots instead will also give you a Scratch-based programming, if your students are just learning to code. It may be a solution for you.

As for ev3dev, I can’t answer your question but there are others here who have experience with it, just not me.

Cleo

3

Hello Cleo,

thank you for your answer!
This is very good news :slight_smile:
My students know Python, so no need for Scratch.

So I just need to decide between your solution and ev3dev!

raphmc

4

@cleoqc
would you be able to point me towards people in the forum who have experience with ev3dev?
thx

5

It seems David Lechner is the primary developer of ev3dev.

Matt

6

Okay, great. Thanks for the support.
I managed to make ev3dev work on the latest RaspberryPi (B+) and the BrickPi3. Looks like it is the right road for me to go down :slight_smile: