Read from RPi 2B USB port

Hi,

Thanks for developing LibreElec.
It runs perfectly on my RPi 2B.

I have one question, though.
Next to my LibreElec box is the console of my weatherstation (WH1080, manuf. id. 1941:8021).
When I plug the console usb output into my RPi, LibreElec is able to detect it using lsusb, however it does not
get a ttyUSB0 (or similar) assigned in /dev.
I know I can get around that by playing with some udev rules.

I'd like to be able to collect data from my weatherstation, and for that I need to install some additional python
modules.
On OpenElec I was able to install pip, but on LE I cannot. Steps followed are :
1) export PYTHONPATH=~/lib
2) export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
3) mkdir ~/lib ~/bin
4) wget get-pip.py
5) run python get-pip.py

The output I'm getting is as follows :

Quote

Collecting pip
Using cached pip-8.1.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting setuptools
Using cached setuptools-24.0.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting wheel
Using cached wheel-0.29.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: pip, setuptools, wheel
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/basecommand.py", line 215, in main
status = self.run(options, args)
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/commands/install.py", line 317, in run
prefix=options.prefix_path,
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/req/req_set.py", line 742, in install
**kwargs
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/req/req_install.py", line 831, in install
self.move_wheel_files(self.source_dir, root=root, prefix=prefix)
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/req/req_install.py", line 1032, in move_wheel_files
isolated=self.isolated,
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/wheel.py", line 346, in move_wheel_files
clobber(source, lib_dir, True)
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/wheel.py", line 317, in clobber
ensure_dir(destdir)
File "/tmp/tmpYHgjOh/http://pip.zip/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 83, in ensure_dir
os.makedirs(path)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/os.py", line 157, in makedirs
OSError: [Errno 30] Read-only file system: '/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-8.1.2.dist-info'

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This is something I did not see when I tried installing pip on OpenElec.
Now, I need pip to be able to install additional python modules to read from USB, like pyUSB.
The idea is to collect data from USB, and send it to a MySQL server on another host.

The version of LE I downloaded is LibreELEC (community) Version: devel-20160710175549-r23415-gf78c95e.
I compiled it myself, after having edited packages/lang/Python/packages.mk and deleting unittest from the "disregard" line.....

Questions :
1) is it at all possible what I'm trying to achieve ?
2) if yes, where do I go wrong ?
3) is there any reason why I shouldn't 'abuse' LE for this purpose ? I feel that the impact of doing this on LE itself should not be disrupting anything. Or....?

Hope someone can help me out, and save me the purchase of another rpi....

Thanks,
Hans