textfiles/fun/CAA/gecaa-49

From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Tue Jan  8 09:49:56 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: Part 49 of CAA #2

Nomadic Research Labs



#49 in the second online CAA series



by



Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)

Milpitas, CA

February 20, 1989



Copyright 1989, Steven K. Roberts





     Well, I'm doing it again.  I'm living that old familiar pre-launch blend

of terror, overload, excitement, and project management.  Settled in the

fringes of Silicon Valley with the Vacuum Velocipodiatrist and Chip the fantasy

sculptor, Maggie and I entertain friends, build systems, work with sponsors,

and spend countless hours rearranging bits on hard disk.  We putter in the

garden, chase off to speaking gigs, and even rent the occasional video.  We

visit friends -- square dancing with little girls one weekend, creeping through

midnight woods the next, having business meetings the next.  We make forays to

Livermore Labs to buy the cast-off furniture of America's national defense

establishment.  And through it all, the window of fleeting opportunity that

separates past from future moves inexorably onward, onward, bringing us slowly

closer to our next abrupt escape into everything that Silicon Valley is NOT.



     But for now we're Milpitian suburbanites pro tem, living in comfort with

friends.  It won't last forever, of course, so we chuckle at our luxurious

space and flagrant energy consumption with only occasional twinges of guilt,

nuking the leftovers and waking to the gentle pattering of automatic

sprinklers.  It seems an extravagance, even though this is the low-rent end of

the Valley (the house we wanted back in Palo Alto rents for $30,000 a year...

$82 a day plus expenses.  For a ROOF!)



     The reason for all this illusory stability, of course, is the Winnebiko --

that perennial obsession of mine, both mistress and tyrant... that vaguely

bicycle-like extravaganza of surface-mount circuit boards and gleaming

antennae.  The machine is undergoing surgery so major that I have begun to

realize that it's becoming a whole new bike, constructed of treasures imported

from afar and mined here in the Valley, all layered together like a silicon

spanakopita atop my faithful old recumbent frame.  I haven't told you much

about the new system yet, other than to hint at satellite communications,

expanded computing power, and wide bandwidth user interfaces.  Since this

chapter is a sort of literary pivot between bike generations, perhaps now is

the time...even though it's dangerous to write about things that aren't done

yet.  Changes are assured, for every new low-power bifurcated widgetframus that

looks even halfway bikeable sets my wetware CAD system afire with

system-enhancement fantasies. (There's the disclaimer.)



                                * * *



     I suppose I should make a quick comment about the reason for all this.

You've already read the basics in previous CAA chapters, of course:  ticket to

nomadness, agile computing tool, combination of passions, gizmological

door-opener, etcetera.  None of that has changed; it's only grown more

ingrained over the years, part habit, part obsession.  There are a few new

twists, though...



     The next journey will be open-ended, and may well take us overseas where

rare is the access to modular phone jacks, power outlets, and the whole

automatic infrastructure of familiar American society.  To do this right, I

want near-total independence in all domains:  computation, communication,

electric power, propulsion, life-support, and so on.  This instantly escalates

the Winnebiko system to a new level.



     That, plus the bottom line:  it has to be fun.  The old machine is

obsolete.  It's architecturally inflexible and much too hardware intensive.

Changes of function require a soldering iron instead of a screen editor.  It

does too little for its weight.  There's no computing horsepower of any real

consequence, there's too little solar power, setup of the radio systems is a

pain, and, well, it's just boring by current standards of engineering elegance.

 And so the celebrated console system is being retired, consigned to a wood

stand under a dust cover in the CAA museum.



     But rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the past is the Winnebiko

III...



                                * * *



     I don't want to go into too much detail here, for it could, quite

literally, fill a textbook.  But during the coming months, as these stories

ooze slowly from solder-burned fingers into a laptop buried in the clutter of

my workbench, you might grow impatient for real adventure.  It's out there,

believe me.  Lots of it.  But first... the engineering adventure... a new

machine.



     There's lots of power on this one:  my current system with 20 watts of

solar panels, 12 amp-hours of batteries, and a plug-in charger could never

support all the new equipment.  The new bicycle carries 118 watts of solar

panels, a regenerative braking system to turn hard-won potential energy into

something more useful than hot brake pads, and the ability to use any external

power source from a car cigarette lighter to 220 AC.  All this dumps into a

charge bus, which is tapped by three dedicated controllers attached to three 15

amp-hour batteries -- one in the trailer, one in the communications equipment

bay behind the seat, and one up front in the console.



     Managing that is one of the myriad tasks performed by the bicycle control

processor (BCP) -- which is now a 68000 running FORTH, linked by SCSI bus to an

I/O expansion unit serving the whole bike and a network of other computers.

There are dedicated microprocessors for text-to-speech synthesis, automatic

transmission control, satellite and ham station control, local area network

management, security and remote operations, variable-reluctance motor-generator

control, and so on.



     None of this takes care of the applications layer -- that's all to run the

bike systems.  On top of the whole control environment is another network:  two

DOS systems (a 286 and a V40) to handle CAD, satellite tracking, text,

database, and software development.  One would be enough in theory, but the 286

board is power hungry... I use the little one when primarily waiting for

keystrokes and not interested in heavy duty processing horsepower.  The two

share a 40 megabyte hard disk, a 3.5" floppy, and a tape backup unit.  And

along with the obligatory math coprocessor, there may be an RTX-2000 FORTH

engine dedicated to image processing for video capture, hidden-line plotting

for topographic mapping, and other calculation-intensive tasks.



     I carry a separate laptop in the new manpack, of course, but it's a

lightweight machine.  When off-bike and needing file support (or wishing to

check status of autonomous subsystems), I can sign on via the UHF business

band.  The bike first responds at a low BBS-like level, accepting a special

command to boot the BCP for remote FORTH command-line control of the whole

system.  If I want to get into the DOS environment, another reserved word boots

the 286 and redirects console I/O via the radio link to my backpack system,

eliminating the need to carry heavy hardware anywhere except in the bike itself

(where there is space for good shock-mounting).



     Any of the communications features can be accessed from any operating

level, whether in remote mode, from the handlebar keyboard while pedaling, or

from the maintenance keyboard while stopped. Cellular phone modem, packet

radio, local network control... all are essentially servers on the network.



     The new console, by the way, is designed to be as flexible as possible.

Most of its real estate is given over to a pair of giant LCD panels -- one VGA

backlit display (640 X 480) and the other a more conventional laptop display.

A surface acoustic wave touchscreen covers both, and any processor can request

either... depending on power budget, ambient lighting conditions, and

resolution requirements.  Typically, the BCP's status and maintenance functions

are on the little one, and graphics-intensive DOS (and, eventually, Mac)

applications are mapped to the big one.  One particularly interesting project

is computer-generation of wireframe map models, showing from any viewpoint the

earth's surface in my immediate vicinity with road vectors overlaid in bold

strokes and my own location a blinking arrow.  (The databases are on CDROM; my

location is derived from a GPS satnav receiver.)  Entries from the contacts

database can then appear as icons, which, when touched, expand into text

windows.  In addition, if time permits, there will be a helmet-mounted display

that presents text or graphics "in the sky" at a comfortable focal length.  All

this allows wider-bandwidth I/O with the neuron-based parallel wetware system

under the helmet, with speech, three display spaces, a thumb mouse, handlebar

keyboard, and touchscreen as comm channels.



     Other front panel devices include a miniature 300 dpi graphic printer for

sponsor referrals and business paperwork, digital instrumentation for speed,

cadence, altitude, temperature, time, and raw power measurements, and a minimal

assortment of switches and LEDs to provide low-level maintenance access in the

event of a major system crash.  The important thing here is that everything on

the bike, except for basic safety equipment like lights, is under computer

control and thus completely hackable.



     The architecture that keeps this from being an interface nightmare is the

key to the whole machine.  I call it a "resource bus," linking as it does all

nodes in the system -- power, audio, serial, analog, and digital.  The devices

on the bus are diverse:  a MIDI music synthesizer, all dedicated micros, radio

equipment, cellular phone, stereo, digital answering machine, printer, fax

board, modem, nav system, speech synthesizer, audio function modules, and so

on.  The bus is only a bus in philosophical terms -- up close it's a massive

FET crosspoint matrix with each junction controlled by a bit in a write-only

memory (finally a use for one of those!).  The implications are interesting:

any interconnection is simply a matter of programming (SMOP), which at the

FORTH level is pretty easy.  I'll be able to run phone patches between ham

radio and cellular while mobile, remotely redirect local audio through an RF

link to my pack if security is triggered, perform diagnostics, have the bike's

speech synthesizer beacon on ham radio frequencies live updates of it's exact

location if it's moved without the correct password, turn alpha particle hits

into MIDI boing events, fax out digitized video images, and so on... all using

the resource bus and some basic software drivers.



     Mechanically, the new bike is growing in sophistication as well. I've

never been happy with my brakes, so the new machine detects the first

displacement of the right-hand brake lever as a command to begin proportionally

drawing power from the trailer wheels via custom microprocessor controlled hub

motors.  A hard squeeze invokes a hydraulic disk brake on the rear wheel, and

the other lever is a purely hydraulic link to a front rim brake.  The

transmission is changing too -- from a 54-speed manual to a 36-speed automatic.

Here, the processor monitors speed, pedal torque, cadence, heart rate, and a

keyed-in "wimp factor" that expresses my subjective robustness... changing

gears to optimize the impedance match between bio-engine and wheels.



     One of my big thrills in this has always been communication, ever since

those primitive few thousand miles in 1983-4 with 300-baud acoustic cups and a

CB radio.  I've been carrying 2-meter and HF ham gear for a while -- now

there's a 10-meter rig built in to take advantage of the sunspot peak, as well

as 2-meter and 70cm multimode rigs.  An HF station is still on board with two

antenna choices -- mobile vertical and wire dipole... and there are various

links between bike and backpack, my bike and Maggie's, and so on.  But the best

part is the new OSCAR-13 station (modes B and J):  I'll be able to stop the

bike, assemble a pair of crossed-yagi beams totalling about 10 feet in length,

fire up the satellite tracker software (it calculates Keplerian elements,

inputs my location from GPS or Loran, and displays a world map showing the

bird's location, azimuth and elevation values, doppler shift, and other

parameters).  With this new satellite, I'll have a hemisphere of coverage at a

time during a half-dozen 6-hour windows a week from anywhere in the world, with

the ability to communicate via full-duplex audio under solar power.  The uplink

is about 30 watts... and the satellite's orbit takes it out to 22,000 miles at

the apogee (2.8 earth diameters).



     Let's see... what else?  Oh -- what to do with extra solar power from the

118 total watts available in full sun (almost 10 amps of 12 volts)?  Simple --

the software can either throw it into the trailer wheels for a 1/8 horsepower

boost, or use it to cool a Peltier-effect device buried in an insulated space

behind the seat.  This should have some nice effects, including cold beer in a

hot desert (one of the world's great pleasures).



     There are various standalone additions -- a miniature digital

oscilloscope, a butane soldering iron, and countless improvements to the

camping and touring gear.  But you get the idea... this system is an all-out

effort aimed at creating a self-maintaining mobile autonomous information

platform, constantly in communication with a worldwide network while freely

wandering the earth's surface and providing unlimited fun to the rider and

companions.



     And that's the kind of design spec I like.



                                * * *



     Oh.  I did mention the word "companions," didn't I?  Two things are

happening that involve other people.



     First, I've been putting the word out for a while that we're looking for a

few exceptional people to take up this life of nomadness with us.  The

responses are trickling in... a lady named Barbara is planning to travel with a

high-end graphics and video system to develop her concept for "artitorials,"

and I've been getting mail in response to a recent usenet posting.  There seems

to be a hunger for adventure afoot in the land.  If you're interested in

knowing more, email me.



     Second, the human intellects and energetic companies that are cooperating

on this new machine represent a truly dazzling resource of creative ability.

For almost six years, I've been collecting wizards... and with some of the very

best I am now forming an ad-hocracy with two linked goals:  market Winnebiko

spinoffs and take on selected consulting projects.  If this one sounds

interesting, give Nomadic Research Labs a call at 408-263-0660.



     That's enough for now.  As the months wear on and the weather turns

seductive here at the base of the Diablo Range... as the greening hills tease

me with thoughts of whistling descents and slowly changing vistas... as the

legs tense in rhythmic urgency here in my static space... I'll grow ever more

desparate for the road. It's out there, a near-infinite thing of wonder and

possibilities, unhurried, patient, waiting.  I pound away on eccentric

machinery, implementing dreams, thinking all the while of that cold beer in the

desert.  You'll be hearing from me at odd intervals:  bear with me until the

adventure toggles once again from intellectual to visceral.



     In the meantime...



                    Cheers from the lab!

                         Steve