[chbot] microcontrollers

[Morris]

On Tue, 2009-05-26 at 00:11 +1200, Paul Davey wrote:

> Does anyone know of any microcontrollers that are designed to run lisp?
> Through microcode or something?
> 

You didn't exactly say what you wanted it for, but depending on your
needs you may be able to use a slightly gruntier CPU and an embedded
Linux solution - prices start at about $60. The issues with Linux based
solutions are power usage, size, and cost. The advantage of a Linux
based solution is you can then use:

ecl - Embedded Common Lisp: http://ecls.sourceforge.net/  (compiles to C
so can target most any processor Linux supports)
picolisp - http://www.software-lab.de/ref.html (Not certain it can be
used, except it is a package supported by dd-wrt
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_list_of_Optware_packages - so
surely it doesn't just run on x86 CPUs). Seems to be focused on web
serving and supports unicode.
scheme48 - see
http://osdir.com/ml/lisp.scheme.scheme48/2006-08/msg00009.html (not lisp
I know!).

The cheapest board is possibly:
http://www.omnima.co.uk/store/catalog/Embedded-controller-p-16140.html
Costs 19 pounds + shipping from UK.
Has 175MHz MIPS processor, 12 IO pins, 2 USB ports, and 5 10/100
ethernet ports (it is a router board). Uses 12V at 0.5A. Boots and runs
Linux from a USB stick.
It doesn't have a big community so you would need to know a bit of Linux
foo.

Something that runs dd-wrt (see
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices) or openwrt is
probably easier to use and has more support e.g. NZD120 gets you a
WRT54GL board with WiFi access:
http://www.pricespy.co.nz/pno_8868.html
However IO is more of a problem and requires hacking the hardware e.g.
there are at least 4 IO pins and 2 serial ports:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WRT54G-TM_SD/MMC_mod
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WRT54GL_MAX232_Serial
Although you would need to do some more sleuthing to ensure it is
suitable and you get the right thing (e.g. it requires 12V at 1.1A - not
for AA batteries!).

There are small and low power Linux solutions that are friendlier for
development, but they tend to be hundreds of dollars e.g. gumstix.

You can also get a free lisp for Palm devices but again the problem is
lack of IO (and when I tried it, it was too slow to do much useful!).

Cheers

Morris
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