Virtual Raspberry Pi with real GPIO pins on Windows laptop
Here's the how-to:
http://www.aoakley.com/articles/2018-...
In this video, I demonstrate a Pi Zero being used as a GPIO Expander on Raspbian x86 running as a virtual machine in VirtualBox on a Windows 10 laptop.
This is great for educators and Jam organisers like me. You get all the power of a virtual machine - such as snapshots, where you can restore the machine to a previous state - plus the ability to use real GPIO pins to create real breadboarding projects and tutorials.
There are limitations. The support is currently limited only to GPIOZero under Python, Scratch2 and pigpio . LEDs, buttons, resistors and other basic breadboarding works fine, as do simple add-ons such as basic H-bridge motor controllers and charlieplexed LED arrays. However, advanced SPI/I2C HATs such as the Sense HAT and other advanced add-ons such as Pimoroni Scroll PHAT are highly unlikely to work.