LabVIEW Community Edition & Raspberry Pi Zero W

[russellb78]

Does LabVIEW Community Edition support Raspberry Pi Zero W?

[Michael Aivaliotis]

That's a good question. I know it's not officially supported in the LINX documentation. I think it has to do with the type of ARM processor used on the zero vs the Pi 4 (for example). I just received a Pi zero, in my hands and will be trying that out soon. So I'll let you know if I find out anything. I remember seeing some info by someone in the community working on this and will post any info i find.

Edit: LINX toolkit does not support Pi Zero. If you need a small form factor Pi then look for a device with the same or similar CPU.

[hooovahh]

Yeah I remember reading somewhere that the zero CPU is missing some instructions or features that LINX uses.  I can't seem to find the thread at the moment.

[Aristos Queue]

Official answer from folks at NI: The answer is unfortunately no. We compile our VIs for ARM V7 architecture. Pi Zero is less capable, doesn’t support all instructions.

[Jordan Kuehn]

5 hours ago, Aristos Queue said:

Official answer from folks at NI: The answer is unfortunately no. We compile our VIs for ARM V7 architecture. Pi Zero is less capable, doesn’t support all instructions.

Does that mean the toolkit is compatible with any ARM V7 Pi? A simple compatibility list/chart would be helpful. I'm looking at the Pi Compute 3+ for example as well as Pi 3 and 4.

[Aristos Queue]

29 minutes ago, Jordan Kuehn said:

Does that mean the toolkit is compatible with any ARM V7 Pi?

I went to ask. 🙂 Answer:

Yes. ARM V7 Pi or greater. The ARM standard is very hard to keep straight. Various vendors add their own suffix and number to indicate something they extended. I believe the correct statement is that we require that it have ARM architecture of ARMv7 or greater, as shown on the Wikipedia page. There will likely be some corner case that makes it harder to describe. As an example of confusion, the ARM8 is actually an ARMv4, the ARM11 is a V6, the Cortex M3 is a V7, etc.

[Aristos Queue]

The Pi Zero is apparently a particularly complex case to figure out :
I had to look it up. The PiZero uses a broadcom chip that is Arm11 era. But the same page also has links to Arm9 and even Arm7. So I believe the Zero uses an Arm11 or less which is V6 architecture.

[Michael Aivaliotis]

15 hours ago, Jordan Kuehn said:

I'm looking at the Pi Compute 3+ for example as well as Pi 3 and 4.

I've tried the Pi4 it works no problem. No idea about the Pi Compute. However it has the same CPU and guts of a Pi3, which also works, so don't see any issue.

[Jordan Kuehn]

2 hours ago, Michael Aivaliotis said:

I've tried the Pi4 it works no problem. No idea about the Pi Compute. However it has the same CPU and guts of a Pi3, which also works, so don't see any issue.

Awesome. Thanks!

[russellb78]

Thank you everyone! This was a great discussion and extremely helpful. 

[Michael Aivaliotis]

11 hours ago, Jordan Kuehn said:

Awesome. Thanks!

I'll be putting out videos on testing all the hardware out there and compatibility with LVCE, over time. As I do, I'll be populating this page: https://labviewwiki.org/wiki/Linx_Toolkit_Hardware_Compatibility_List

If others confirm compatibility, then please update that page.

[russellb78]

This compatibility list is a great idea and will definitely reduce any uncertainties and confusion with what hardware has been tested.