Embedded Lisp for DSP

After wasting enormous amounts of time hopelessly trying to debug my work on a fairly decent sized research-based embedded DSP project, I've come up with lots of ideas for debugging tools, visualization, etc. I don't know how things are done in the real world. Unfortunately, this was my first project, and I didn't have the greatest tools in the world. Anyway, I thought I would present the latest idea I had today. The other ideas were pretty simple. This one's a bit of the deep end, but that just makes it more interesting. I'm taking it seriously thought and so should you.

What I want to do is put a little tiny lisp interpreter on the DSP. I know you're thinking that's crazy, but it's not. It would only be for research and debugging. It doesn't have to get compiled into the end product. One problem I often have is the need to dynamically change 'constants' in my algorithms. For example, The echo cancellation algorithm I used has a step size and a regularization parameter. In addition to that I also need to scale the input and output. There are a few ways of sending data back and forth between the host and target such as RTDX and HPI. I've only used RTDX, which is incredibly slow. Now, consider what I would have to do if I decided I wanted to be able to change just one of those constants at runtime. I would have to write some special RTDX reading code on the target. I would have to write some RTDX writing code on the host. Then I would have to go through the following cycle (probably for a few hours) until I get things right.

Recompile host/target-->Reload target-->Restart DSP-->|
^                                                     |
|                                                     |
|---------debug/re-code<-----Check results------------|

If I manage to get that working, I still have to change it a little for each new constant/parameter/whatever I want to change. Either that or I have to make the two work together. This would lead to commenting and uncommenting code depending on which variables I needed to set (and more of the cycle above).

The other problem I have is just sending data from the target to the host. This involves lots of starting and stopping the DSP so I can put in some RTDX write statements. Of course this means I have to remove the other ones. (I think there is a way around this, but you don't want to send data you aren't using given the limited bandwidth available.)

Of course Code Composer has some special graphical tools that let you do some of this. However, I've never had much luck with it. It occasionally results in crashing. And even when it's stable, it's still just not the way to go. You're very limited in what you can do. You have to work through the GUI and re-set everything up each time. A better way would be using a little lisp code.

In the case of setting parameters, I'm thinking of the following. There is a lisp interpreter waiting on an interrupt for some lisp code to come down the line. The lisp code might do something like

Disable hardware/software interrupts
Reinitialize algorithm
Repeat for 30 seconds:
  Read and set parameter(s)
Enable interrupts

If something goes wrong, like a reference to a non-existent variable, the interpreter will spit back an error message over the line. But notice; now I can solve my problem with the following development cycle.

(re)write lisp-->recompile host-->check results-->|
^                                                 |
|-------------------------------------------------|

There is no recompiling and restarting the target. And I can upload any script I want at any time. I can easily modify old scripts to do what I need. You simply could not do this with a special tool. To solve the second problem, the code would simply have to 'print' what I wanted back over the line. These days we have embedded Java cores. Is there any reason I can't have a small lisp debugger/analysis tool?