Has anyone tried interfacing Raspberry Pi (Zero 2 W) with LEGO Spike Prime via UART?

[ChickChickenKFC]

Hi everyone,

I am in the planning stage of an autonomous robotics project and I would like to seek advice from the community on a specific architecture I’m considering.

The concept:
I want to use a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W as a dedicated vision system. It will run OpenCV to detect colors and then send simple, text-based commands (e.g., "RED", "BLUE") via UART to a LEGO Spike Prime Hub. The Hub will act solely as a motor controller, executing actions based on the received color commands.

I have a few questions for those who might have done something similar:

Has anyone successfully implemented a setup where a Raspberry Pi acts as a "vision brain" for a Spike Prime Hub using UART for communication?
Since I want to keep it simple (sending only color names), what is the most reliable way to handle the serial communication between the two?
Are there any major pitfalls I should be aware of regarding UART stability or signal noise between these two devices when they are working together in one robot?
Would anyone who has built something similar be willing to share their approach or any "lessons learned"?

I know there are a few projects with uart cable connection, but I want to ask your opinion whether this is a good solution.

I haven't started building the robot yet, so I want to make sure this architecture is solid before I start soldering and assembling. Any tips, links to projects, or general advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

[dlech]

I think there have been plenty of people that have done it with a microcontroller, like an ESP32. Probably not so much with something running Linux, like an RPi Zero 2W. Should work just fine though.

There is a generic UART class for this sort of thing: https://docs.pybricks.com/en/stable/iodevices/uartdevice.html

If you want a really simple way to start though, you could use https://pybricks.com/learn/smart-sensors/getting-started/. Assuming you can run the Chromium web browser on the RPi Zero 2W, it should just work. Then for fun, you could implement the same protocol on your own and replace the web browser with OpenCV.

[ChickChickenKFC]

Thanks a lot, but can it work by cable(smart sensor)? I need a wired solution for competitions

[dlech]

https://docs.pybricks.com/en/stable/iodevices/uartdevice.html uses a cable. It doesn't work with the smart sensor stuff though, so you would need to implement that on your own.