Pyro – Networking made simple
One for All
© Lead Image © FernandoCortes, 123RF.com
Pyro allows multiple hardware devices to interact as if they are all on a local machine by hiding the networking.
Several of my projects have required multiple Raspberry Pis working in tandem to accomplish an ultimate goal, such as driving multiple independent displays or integrating a device with a dedicated controlling computer. Sometimes the setup had unique hardware (e.g., sensors); other times distance made it easier to use a remote system and WiFi rather than a lot of cabling. Although you can choose from many approaches to distributed technology, here, I'll focus on the Python remote objects (Pyro) library.
My most recent project that fell in this category was a set of scoreboards for my church's Vacation Bible School. I integrated four large LCD TVs into the set design (Figure 1) and dedicated a Raspberry Pi to each one. Also, I wanted the ability to update each team's score in real time from a centralized console. To accomplish this, I wrote the code for the scoreboards and their controller in Python and communicated between the different screens with Pyro [1].
Each Pi runs a Raspbian Lite distro and a custom Python script. After flashing the SD card with Raspbian, the only special configuration was to connect to the WiFi network and install the Pyro library. Python is installed by default with Raspbian, and the PyGame library, also a default, provided the graphics. PyGame can drive the Pi framebuffer directly, so the graphical desktop isn't needed.
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