Re: Lua for non-programmers

[James Snyder <jbsnyder@...>]

On May 20, 2009, at 4:19 PM, Doug Rogers wrote:

> King, Mike wrote:
> > Has anyone worked on or know of a project where non-programmers  
> > would use Lua to accomplish a task?  I have been given the task of  
> > creating a program where the goal is to help non-programmers setup  
> > and capture data from different sensors.
>
> Mike, you might be interested in (the (ongoing development of) the  
> eLua project. While you may not need an embedded solution, they have  
> put together a set of primitive sensor-like devices.
>
>  http://www.eluaproject.net/
>
> Actually, most of the talk I've seen has been on the quite active  
> mailing list and it seems to contain more than what has been posted  
> to the site. Also, beware that the current release is GPL. They have  
> mentioned a possible switch of licenses.

The next release of eLua is switching to an MIT license.  The license  
file has not yet been changed out, but when 0.6 (waiting on  
documentation writing) goes out it should change.  Bogdan may be able  
to answer why we haven't switched it yet.

I'm currently working on updating Lua-RPC to work with eLua and with  
Lua 5.1.4 (http://github.com/jsnyder/luarpc/tree/master), which would  
allow for easily acquiring data on an eLua device and to return that  
data to a desktop instance of Lua.  Currently the code is built around  
using internet sockets for the RPC connection, and seems to be now  
working between instances of desktop Lua 5.1.4. (Caveat: I have not  
made any official "release" of these modifications, and they probably  
should get more testing before casual or critical usage).

One of my intentions in adding this RPC mechanism is for use of eLua  
devices as sort-of "intelligent" data acquisition devices where they  
can house some control logic, operating independently, but also be  
used to acquire, log, and transmit sensor and performance data.

I can't speak for the eLua project (Bogdan Marinescu or Dado Sutter  
would be better to ask), but I'm personally interested in having it be  
friendly to both seasoned Lua/C programmers and rather inexperienced  
programmers who can get started without much or any prior programming  
knowledge.

--
James Snyder
Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University
jbsnyder@fanplastic.org
http://fanplastic.org/key.txt
ph: (847) 448-0386

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