If you look at the other end of lisp, that is life in less then 1 meg of
ram, a 286 or 386, several serial ports and a small lisp package like
muLisp83, lisp can make a very practical contributions. We control our
two central air conditioners with a 386, muLisp83, and 3 serial ports
1). reads the temp upstairs 2). reads the temp down stairs 3).
interfaced to the air conditioner electronics. muLisp watches the time
of day, the day of the week, communicates with the assembler routines
that drive the UART ports, and makes rather basic decisions about when
to turn the air conditioner off and on. During the hottest 4 months
I've been in Texas we saved $540 on electricity compared to our next
door neighbors with the same size house. The 386 and interfaces to the
air conditioners and temperature controls cost $280.
We hooked up almost the same type system to a drip irrigation system.
Here mulisp reads outside temp, time of day, wind speed and makes
decisions about when and how much to water. We had a good vegetable
garden this year in spite of the 106 degree temperature and spent no
more on our water bill than our neighbors with no gardens. The cost of
this system was more then the air conditioner system because of the
expense of the hardware to controll the watering system. Net savings
here was hard to determine.
I have watched this forum for sometime and have seen very lofty goals
for lisp. On the other hand lisp can turn into a very pragmatic process
control language. Who needs another Lisp? Not me I need an old one,
small, fast, and cheap. Are there any other folks in this forum using
lisp for process control? I would like to hear what you are doing and
what kind of electronics you are interfaced to esp data collection
boards etc.
(cons '(bank-account) '(Lisping-my-money-to-the-banking-ly)) yours
rusty
PS the pc's don't even need a hard drive.
AFAIK, at MIT, Rodney Brooks had considered using embedded scheme
interpreters in the robot joints, to control the joints and communicate
with the surrounding joints. Small, small interpreters.
I believe the primary reason we hear more about large problems on this
newsgroup is because that is what common lisp is geared toward. I bet you
would be far more likely to hear of such embedded controllers more in the
scheme newsgroup, which tends to require a smaller footprint.
Sunil
rusty craine <········@flash.net> writes:
> I have watched this forum for sometime and have seen very lofty goals
> for lisp. On the other hand lisp can turn into a very pragmatic process
> control language. Who needs another Lisp? Not me I need an old one,
> small, fast, and cheap. Are there any other folks in this forum using
> lisp for process control? I would like to hear what you are doing and
> what kind of electronics you are interfaced to esp data collection
> boards etc.
> (cons '(bank-account) '(Lisping-my-money-to-the-banking-ly)) yours
> rusty
> PS the pc's don't even need a hard drive.