Embedded Scheme Specialist LambdaChip Launches First In-House STM32 Development Board

Embedded functional programming language specialist LambdaChip has announced the launch of a dedicated development board, the LambdaChip Alonzo, based around an STMicroelectronics STM32 microcontroller.

Tuwei Technology's LambdaChip was founded with one aim in mind: To encourage the use of functional programming, in particular using the Scheme language, on embedded systems though the provision of an open-source virtual machine and bytecode compiler. "LambdaChip is a functional programming featured Virtual Machine [which] runs on an embedded system," the company explains.

"Usually, the embedded system has extremely limited resources, for an instance, 50kB RAMs, less than 80MHz CPU. LambdaChip aims to provide fair speed on such a compact system. That is to say, you never user C/C++ to develop embedded software with LambdaChip, you will learn and use Scheme which is a famous multi-paradigm programming language. Scheme is a dialect of Lisp and widely used for functional programming research or teaching."

Previously, the project had concentrated on providing an open-source software stack for running Scheme code on a variety of embedded systems; now, it's shifting to releasing its own development board specifically for the task.

Brought to our attention by CNX Software, the LambdaChip Alonzo is driven by an STM32F411CEU6 microcontroller with an Arm Cortex-M4 core running at 100MHz, 128kB of RAM, and 512kB of on-chip flash and provides general-purpose input/output (GPIO) headers, a microSD slot, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy connectivity, a user-addressable button, and an RGB LED, along with a ten-pin programming header for use with an external debugger.

The company is taking pre-orders for the new board via Seeed Studio, priced at $99 including the board, protective acrylic cover, USB cable, 8GB microSD card, a USB converter for the board's USB Type-C power input, and a Saruman debugger for programming and debug. Additionally, the board's schematic has been published to GitLab.