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Comment by exdsq | Hacker News Reader

I asked a question on HN but didn't get any answers - this might be an easier forum to get one.

I'm working on a hobbyist rocketry project where I'm helping build the flight computer - basically an Arduino Nano connected to modules like a GPS system, accelerator, gyroscope, etc. Are there any Lisp dialects that someone would recommend for an Arduino? The Nano is technically replaceable so if there are better boards that can use Lisp I'd be interested too!

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You might want to consider running something like the Raspberry Pi Zero. Looks like the Nano is 45mm x 18mm and the Pi Zero is 65mm x 30mm. If you could fit the Pi Zero it would probably make your life a lot easier.

This is a great suggestion; the Zero has enough oomph to run the JVM, which gives you access to Clojure!

I had the most luck installing the Zulu Embedded version of Java, and I've had a Clojure webapp running on my Pi Zero for over a week now without any hiccups.

I'm a post or two behind on chronicling my adventures, but I did at least capture how I got Clojure running on the Zero here: https://ajpierce.com/2020-01-08_safe-to-wake-pt4/

I don't think some specific lisp is required, the one which compiles to C should be good enough. Active example is https://gitlab.com/owl-lisp/owl

I don't know anything about owl-lisp, but you also need a lisp that does not do any runtime memory allocation, as those are usually problematic in embedded projects, especially in those with as little RAM as the nano.

If they have more memory than an IBM 704, it isn't that problematic.

After installing uLisp I have 518 bytes of RAM and 1050 bytes of storage on my board - I'd kill for the sweet, sweet 18,432 bytes of an IBM 704! ;)

What's wrong with the uLisp that the linked article is about?

The nano is basically a thin uno and has little storage for large projects, and OPs list of sensors is large. Something like three hundred cell limit. Its just not going to fit.

I've played with drivers using ulisp and its fun and very fast on an adafruit SAMD51 board with plenty of storage. A Metro M4 Gran Central is a lovely dev board but too large for OP to launch.

Maybe an adafruit M4 feather board would work. I've not used one but its supposedly plug and play with ulisp, so I've heard.

I've never used one, but in theory a mattairtech.com product seems like what OP wants. ulisp should compile its just another SAMD51 board, right? And its available with some of the sensors OP wanted onboard. Note that "never used one" means OP will literally be breaking new ground. All I'm sure of its a physically very small SAMD51 board and I can't see any obvious reason ulisp wouldn't work.

The future of embeded dev is probably FPGA for custom hardware and interfaces with lisp or similar HLL (Straight up Clojure getting embedded?). No I don't mean tomorrow future, but maybe 2030.

I was browsing through the uLisp sources looking for places where I could maybe provide FPGA acceleration... Didn't come up with anything off the top of my head, but the thoughts are germinating :-) Might dust off my copy of the Rekursiv book...

I did just try uLisp but it used 96% of my storage and 74% of my RAM, so it's not viable. It was nice to set up though - it pretty much worked out the box - so I do suggest trying it out on slightly larger systems.

According to recent articles on HN, NASA used to use Macintosh Common Lisp for many of its projects.

I'm not an Arduino person, but maybe there's a Common Lisp variant available to you.

They also had several megabytes of RAM.

Yep this is an important point - I had 2 KB of RAM available and uLisp leaves me with 518 bytes.. I need to go smaller!

GP was talking about common lisp. Even CLISP requires ~4MB for the heap.

Common LISP could certainly generate assembler for Arduino and other MCUs, but there's no way you're fitting that fat old beast (whom I do still love) on one . :-)

You might want to check this one:

https://makerlisp.com/

Any Raspberry Pi should work fine for Lisp but if I had to use an Arduino I'd just write the code in Processing (or whatever they call the native Arduino compiler language these days) because fitting a Lisp into one would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

Lisp used to run in 60's hardware, I bet most embedded boards have more memory than those.

Of course it can be done, but it would be a rather crippled Lisp. If the only Lisp I had was 60s Lisp, I'd probably choose Forth instead.

I just tried uLisp on my embedded board and it used 96% of the storage and 74% of the memory. Easy to set up but not viable.

no direct arduino experience, but I'd imagine the potential would be greater for scheme than lisp since it is a more minimal subset - quick google reveals 'microscheme'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11790630

that said more powerful scheme features like tail recursion and macro systems may or may not be compatible with a more embedded scheme, so I wouldn't count on it being a full 'representative' of what scheme actually is - this may or may not matter, depending on the project

Not firsthand experience, but what about one of the Scheme dialects that compiles to C?

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