Port Isomax to Arduino

[fabio]

Randy,

My prototype applications of Isomax have been exceptionally successful and I credit your brilliant vision of enabling finite state machines with FORTH. Let me also say that I have been able to combine Isomax with Mamdani fuzzy control structures for easy and effective fuzzified state machine control.

I have employed several platforms with post-assembler coding schemes like Isopod/Isomax, OOPic/VB, etc. To my great concern all of my favorite platforms are disappearing! My cause-effect investigation has led me to conclude that the psuedo-open source Arduino project has claimed an enormous share of the market for low-volume/custom microcontroller applications (eg. industrial prototypes, hobby, education, etc.) thus threatening the commercial viability of others.

The Arduino project runs on the low-end 8bit Atmel platforms and employs a psuedo-BASIC/C language, AVR, which is a hybrid procedural/object structure. I have to say that the Atmel platform is inferior to the 16bit DSP56F800 series in computing power and peripherals. Further, the Arduino language is fundamentally inferior to Isomax. BUT, as the Wizard of OZ said - what they have that you do not is... an open source society. Although Arduino is inelegant, it is utile for most folks as they simply shop for the code they want, download and incorporate and it works!

I know that IsoMax is generations ahead of AVR and could wipe out AVR if only... if only IsoMax is ported to Atmel and a wide variety of state machines are uploaded to the existing Arduino open source library.

One more point - Arduino needs a PC-based IDE and constant development from volunteers. Imagine the same labor freed of that effort and redirected to state machine development with the embracing of FORTH architecture!

My suggestion to port Isomax to Arduino/Atmel is much easier said than done, but it seems to me a viable product strategy.

Best wishes,
Fabio

[RMDumse]

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

Yes I agree, Arduino has captured a great deal of the low volume and experimental market, and it has damaged the financial viability of the previous suppliers to this market.

What bothers me, is how do you compete with free? I think the answer is you don't. To paraphrase Gresham's law, "bad software drives out good" and you don't notice it until you can't get good software anymore, and no one is willing to make it for free.

[RMDumse]

Historically, New Micros, Inc. has included software to promote hardware sales. I think it would be fairly trivial to port IsoMax(TM) to the AVR. (Several thousands of dollars). So while I can see open sourcing IsoMax(TM) for the Arduino would certainly give the Wiring code a run for it's money, I don't see how anything financial could be recovered. In other words, I can see how porting IsoMax(TM) to Arduino hardware would promote Arduino hardware sales, but I can't see how it would promote New Micros, Inc. hardware sales.

Previously, when we were able to embed our software in ROM, so you got it when you bought the chip from us, there was value added and a path of return on investment. Now, where the chips are Flash based, and the software copied into the chip, I don't see that channel of renumeration.

If anyone does see a way, i'd be happy to hear their argument.

[fabio]

This market segment seems to have a trajectory toward commodity. I am reminded that Motorolla found itself in a similar predicament. Their response to chips becoming commodities was to divest the chip divisions and to move up the product ladder to consumer products and thereby move up the gross margin ladder as well. This is not an easy transition. The capital investment requirements for consumer products is nearly unbounded. However, industrial products seem more manageable for both capital investment and rational behavior of customers. Of course, New Micros has proved itself in its single-board systems for general industrial application. I wonder if New Micros could find new markets by targeting specific applications with a completely packaged product for the job.

I toss on the table closed-loop motion control applications. For example, I have need for rapid protoyping capacity at a price below the current offerings by the established manufacturers. In dispair I have examined hobby machines like the RepRap/MakerBot project - yet another open source. But, I have to say that the hobby machines have insufficient build envelope and resolution. There is a clear gap in capability between the industrial machines and hobby machines into which my requirements fall. I do not have the time to pursue engineering my own solution and hope someone else will. Seems ripe for a new entrant that has a real business accumen for the B-2-B market.

As a related issue, I noticed that the hobby machine producers have a strange paradigm to produce their inventory - they ignore efficient and productive industrial tools and instead use their own slow hobby machines for production causing great backlogs of customer orders. They are treating their international boom market like some craft fair...

I hope that these observations stimulate your business creativity into finding a more profitable path for New Micros.