Implementing Erlang/OTP on Intel Galileo

Abstract: The Intel Galileo, inspired by the well-known Arduino board, is a development board with many possibilities because of its strength. The Galileo is has an Intel processor capable of running GNU/Linux and can be connected to the internet, which opens up the possibility to be controlled remotely. The programming language that comes with the Intel Galileo is the same as for the Arduino development boards, and is therefore very limited and does not utilize the Galileo’s entire strength. Our aim with this project is to integrate a more suitable programming language; a language that can make better use of the relatively powerful processor to control the components of the board. The programming language of choice is Erlang, and the reason is obvious. Erlang can be described as a process-oriented programming language based on the functional programming paradigm and its power in concurrency. The result of the project was the successful integration of a complete version of GNU/Linux on the board and the cross-compilation of Erlang/OTP onto the board. Having Erlang running on the system opens up many possibilities for future work, amongst all: creating Erlang programs for the Intel Galileo, integrating an effective API, and measuring the pros and cons of using Erlang on an Intel Galileo.