eLua stands for Embedded Lua and the project aims to offer the full implementation of the Lua Programming Language to the embedded world, extending it with specific features for efficient and portable software embedded development. For more details please visit the project page.

If you’ve just downloaded eLua and are looking to get started check out using eLua.

eLua allows you to develop and run Lua programs on a wide variety of microcontrollers.

Some aspects of eLua are:

• Transforms hardware into a commodity: Design and code your products for eLua and make them as hardware-independent as possible. Upgrade or completely change your hardware in the future and save time and money, using the approved source code with little or no modifications.

• Source code portability: Like in Lua, you program in C, Lua or a mixture of both and your program runs in a wide varied of (sometimes radically different) platforms and architectures supported. Full control of the platform.: eLua runs on the "bare-metal". There is no Operating System between your programs and the microcontroller. Develop on targets: fully functional Lua and a dedicated shell on the microcontroller itself. No need to install a specific development environment on the PC side, other than a serial or ehternet console/terminal emulator. You can also use any text editor, save your programs in sd/mmc and other media and use them directly in your platforms.

• Flexible products: Add modern high level script-language capabilities to your projects, resulting in highly adaptable, field-programable and reconfigurable designs. Efficient (and cheap!) future evolution to your systems.

• Learn embedded: Simple interactive and interpreted experimenting cycle. Use your desktop programming skills to become an embedded systems developer in no time and with a lot of fun.

• Embedded RAD: Prototype and experiment on a Rapid Application Develop model. Test your ideas directly on the target platforms and cheap development kits. No need for simulators or future code adaptations.

• Ready to use kits: A big (and growing!) number of Open Source hardware and commercially available platforms supported. Prototype cheap and fast and design your final hardware later using the produced code.

• Longevity: Add user configuration and scripting capabilities to your projects, making them adaptable to the always changing contexts of industrial processes, evolving engineering, automation standards, field optimizations etc…​

• Worry-free Licence: eLua is free and open-source software and we promote it as much as we can. But our MIT licence (the same as Lua’s) allows you to use eLua in your commercial and private-code products as well. Nothing to ask, no royalties to pay, just tell the world you’re using eLua.

For more information about the functionality (implemented and planned) in eLua check our status page.

Online documentation can be found on the web for the most recent release version and development versions in the get better section of the project website.

Project documentation can be generated for the version of the project associated with this document by following the instructions in the README.TXT file in the doc directory.

eLua authors and main developers can be contacted at:

Bogdan Marinescu: bogdan.marinescu -at- eluaproject -dot- net

Dado Sutter: dadosutter -at- eluaproject -dot- net

James Snyder: jbsnyder -at- eluaproject -dot- net

You are also welcomed to share your questions and suggestions on our Mail Discussion List