
Lisp Badge: A single-board computer that you can program in uLisp - lnyan
http://www.ulisp.com/show?2L0C
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Animats
2816 Lisp cells (11264 bytes). A bit on the small side, but you get 5ms
garbage collections because the memory is so tiny.

We need more little systems that are somewhere between underpowered Arduinos
and entire Linux systems.

If only Blackberry hadn't killed off open-source QNX. A board with a few
megabytes of RAM and QNX in ROM would be a nice system for many embedded
applications. You get processes, threads, message passing, and real-time
scheduling. But disks, users accounts, networking, etc. are optional add-ons.
Nice for embedded applications where you need to control hardware but have
other things to do as well.

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kwhitefoot
These days an ESP-8266 is scarcely more expensive than the ATmega128 and has a
lot more memory, in fact the ESP32 is only a few cents/pennies/kroner more,
even an ATmega328 would give twice as much memory.

I wonder if uLisp is portable to the ESP.

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fred256
It looks like this is using the ATmega 1284 which has 4 times the flash (128
kB vs 32 kB) and 8 times the RAM (16 kB vs 2 kB) as the 328.

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kwhitefoot
Oops, sorry, missed the significance of the trailing 4.

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fitzsim
I recently built three of these. There's no kit, so to build one you have
acquire all the parts and learn TQFP soldering. The result is a really neat
little computer. I did a write-up on my blog:

[https://www.fitzsim.org/blog/?p=365](https://www.fitzsim.org/blog/?p=365)

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Pamar
Can anyone provide ideas of what this can be used for?

(Just to clarify: I am not trying to dismiss this as "useless". I am genuinely
interested about knowing about use cases: in part because embedded systems or
low resource self-contained systems are not my area of expertise).

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crististm
This is a genuine question but in the following sense.

I see it asked today more like "What of the programs that we've already think
of by today can we run on this? With an implicit answer that it seems so
underpowered for anything non trivial and we already have more powerful
systems so why bother with its limitations?"

When I was starting to learn about computers everything about them was cool
and awesome (later but soon enough I've learned later that they do games as
well). But if I would have been asked by my father what good were they then I
would have not have an answer that would be acceptable in the 'business'
sense. Computers were cool in themselves. The process of hacking them was its
own reward but my father would see me typing or playing games. The most
important realization for me was that I could make them do "anything" that I
could think of. The realization that I was not limited in the space of
programming was empowering.

So yes. Running most of today's programs doesn't make sense on it. But if you
can see it as a playing (safe exploration) ground then the question is
irrelevant. The most important issue is that playing may be the only thing
that would allow you to imagine applications that you would not be able to
imagine otherwise.

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nanomonkey
I'd like to build out something similar with a mechanical keyboard, where I
could write/program on the go, then connect up to a full size computer and
upload my work over usb, bluetooth or ps2. You could manage keyboard
layout/chording along with password key management, and rudimentary
calculations. I imagine an esp32 would be more in line once wifi/bluetooth
were required. Esp-lisp already has a rudimentary Emacs...so perhaps most of
the heavy lifting has already been done.

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numpad0
Couldn’t find BOM but processor is Atmega1284p, so between Arduino Uno and
Mega. 1284p is also used in some low-end 3D printers.

Is it hard to do a touch keyboard on devices like this? Full tactile switch
arrays adds so many solder points and I feel it drives up costs somewhat.

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cushychicken
_Is it hard to do a touch keyboard on devices like this?_

At this size, yeah. It's tough to make touch keys large enough that you don't
tap multiple buttons at once.

It also takes a lot of processor IO, and generally a dedicated cap sense
peripheral as well. Plus, many of those peripherals have a scan interval
that's laggy when you get to large IO counts.

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cyberbanjo
Very cool. You can also flash Arduino with the uLisp firmware and program it
in uLisp over serial.

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exdsq
You can but I found my available memory afterwards was very small, when
running on an Arduino Uno. I think I had ~14kb available afterwards?

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tartoran
Does this come assembled or is it a DIY? I did not find details on the order
page other than “2 Layers PCB 61 x 106.7 mm FR-4, 1.6 mm, 1, HASL with lead,
Black Solder Mask, White silkscreen”

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lnyan
It's a DIY

Here are the details about how to build one:
[http://www.technoblogy.com/show?2AEE](http://www.technoblogy.com/show?2AEE)

