wordy@cup.portal.com (Steven K Roberts) (07/02/89)
(This is a revised look at the work-in-progress on the Winnebiko III,
which is of course taking about three times as long as it should. Current
status is life in the fringes of Silicon Valley, up to my elbows in
various forms of poison goo as I do the cellulose-core, silicon-matrix,
polyester-filled composite wheeled auxiliary storage unit (CCSMPFC WASU),
otherwise known as a trailer of hot-glued cardboard with fiberglass over
it. Someday soon I'll smell solder instead of styrene again. Anyway,
the last version of this is pretty dated... if you're interested in
the new compu-bike, read on.... and viva nomadness!!!)
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The Winnebiko III: A Sneak Preview
A first look at the new Computing Acrosss America system
by
Steven K. Roberts
revised: June 28, 1989
Copyright 1989, Steven K. Roberts; first published in similar form
on the GEnie computer network. All rights reserved (but you may
distribute this freely as long as your recipients can).
It's happening again. The road is mission, obsession, and
lifestyle of choice. I have rented a house in the fringes of
Silicon Valley, built a lab, and begun the long, long process of
preparing machines, software, and bodies for the resumption of
full-time nomadness.
The reason for all this illusory stability, of course, is
the Winnebiko -- that perennial obsession of mine, at once
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.
This document is an attempt to characterize the new system,
though it's dangerous to write about things that aren't done yet.
Changes to this "spec" between now and late-1989 departure are
assured, for every new bifurcated widgetframus that looks even
halfway bikeable sets my wetware CAD system afire with
system-enhancement fantasies.
* * *
I suppose I should first make a quick comment about the
reason for all this. You've probably read the basics in other CAA
publications: ticket to adventure, agile computing tool,
combination of wide-ranging passions, gizmological door-opener,
etc. None of that has changed; 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 will take us
overseas where rare is 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 escalates the
Winnebiko system to a new level.
That, plus the original bottom line: it has to be fun. The
battered old machine is obsolete. It's architecturally inflexible
and much too hardware-intensive. Changes of function require
soldering iron instead of 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 radio systems is a pain,
and, well, it's just plain boring by current standards of
engineering elegance. And so the celebrated switch-encrusted
console system is being retired, consigned to a wood stand under a
dust cover in the CAA museum where it might utter, now and again,
it's synthesized query: "Are you going to ride me now, Steve?"
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 a complete
description will, quite literally, fill a textbook. This is an
image painted in coarse, hurried strokes, only hinting at the
complexities of what it represents.
First, the basic substrate: packaging. The new systems are
distributed throughout the 12-foot bicycle-trailer combo, with
most computer and control hardware in a streamlined console up
front. This unfolds completely for service, and is designed to be
autonomous, shock-isolated, and RF-shielded. Behind the seat, a
second major enclosure carrries radio communications gear along
with a breakaway radio-linked manpack computer systems, and a
third subsystem devoted to satellite communication, HF, and power
management lives in the trailer. All regions are linked by a
power bus, high-speed data cables, multiplexed audio lines, and
miscellaneous control cabling.
A major issue, of course, is power. My current system with
20 watts of solar panels, 12 amp-hours of batteries, and wimpy
plug-in charger could never support all the new equipment. The
bicycle will now carry 92 watts of solar panels, a regenerative
braking system to turn hard-won potential energy into something
more useful than hot brake pads, and switching supplies to take
advantage of any external power source from a car cigarette
lighter to 220 AC. All this dumps into a charge bus, which is
tapped by dedicated controllers attached to three 15 amp-hour
batteries -- one in the trailer, one in the communications
equipment bay, and one up front in the console (plus a small one
in the manpack system).
Managing that is one of the myriad tasks performed by the
bicycle control processor (BCP) -- which is now a 68000 running
FORTH, linked 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, satellite
and ham station control, packet data communications,
instrumentation and diagnostics, MIDI control, local area network
management, security and remote operations, regenerative braking
system, 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 environments (a 286 and a
V40) to handle CAD, satellite tracking, mapping, text, database,
and software development. One is quite enough in theory, but the
286 board is power hungry... I use the little one when waiting for
keystrokes and am uninterested in spending energy on heavy
processing horsepower. The two share a 40 megabyte hard disk, a
3.5" floppy, and a streamer tape backup unit. And there may be
the innards of a Macintosh laptop as well, to support biketop
publishing and other graphics-intensive efforts.
I carry a separate laptop in the 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 packet datacomm in the UHF business band. The
bike responds at a low BBS-like level, accepting a special command
to boot the BCP for remote FORTH control of the whole system. If
I want to get into the DOS environment, a 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 shock mounting.
The backpack also hosts a 2-meter ham radio, as well as a
full-duplex audio link to the bike for cellular phone access,
local monitoring, security, dictation, and so on.
Any of the communications features can be accessed from any
operating level, whether in RF-linked remote mode, via the
handlebar keyboard while pedaling, or through the maintenance
keyboard while stopped. Cellular phone modem, fax machine, packet
radio, local network control... all are essentially servers on the
network right alongside processors and file devices.
The new console is designed to be as flexible as possible.
Most of its real estate is given over to a pair of LCD panels --
one VGA backlit display (640 X 480) and the other a more
conventional laptop display. A touchscreen covers the VGA, 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 applications are mapped to
the big one (the Mac display will flip down, exposing both at
once). 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;
maps are drawn by the CAD package.) Entries from the contacts
database can then appear as icons, which, when touched, expand
into text windows. In addition, there will be a helmet-mounted
display that presents text or graphics directly to my right eye at
a comfortable focal length, with ultrasonic sensors detecting my
head angle for mouse and window management. All this allows
wider-bandwidth I/O with the neuron-based parallel wetware system
under the helmet -- using speech, four display spaces, a thumb
mouse, handlebar keyboard, and touchscreen as comm channels.
Other front panel devices include a miniature graphic
printer for sponsor referrals and business paperwork, digital
instrumentation for speed, cadence, altitude, temperature, time,
inclination, elevation, torque, effective frontal area, 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 all this from becoming 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 with handlebar keyboard or
voice input, 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. The implications are
interesting: any interconnection is simply a matter of
programming, which at the FORTH level is relatively 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 frequencies live updates
of its exact location if it's moved without the correct password,
turn alpha particle hits into MIDI "boing" events, fax out
digitized video images via celphone or radio, receive and display
satellite weather maps, 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 54-speed manual to 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 QRP ham gear for a while -- now there's an all-band HF
transceiver built in for global communication, as well as 2-meter
and 70cm multimode rigs and an amateur television station. There
are three classes of antennae -- mobile verticals, folding beams,
and dipoles... and there are spread spectrum data 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 about 10 feet
long, and fire up the satellite tracker software (it calculates
Keplerian elements, inputs my coordinates from GPS or Loran, and
displays a world map showing the bird's location, azimuth/
elevation values, doppler shift, pointing angle, and other
parameters). With this satellite, I have a hemisphere of coverage
at a time during a dozen or so windows a week from anywhere in the
world, with the ability to communicate via full-duplex audio under
solar power. The uplink power is 25 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 92 total watts available in full sun (7.6 amps of
12 volts)? Simple -- the software can either throw it into the
wheels for a .1 horsepower boost, or use it to cool Peltier-effect
solid-state cooling devices installed in my helmet and buried in
an insulated space behind the seat. This should have some
soothing effects, including cold beer in a hot desert (one of the
world's great pleasures).
There are various standalone additions -- a miniature
PC-linked digital oscilloscope with outboard spectrum analyzer, 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
under human and solar power, supporting a freelance writing
business and providing unlimited fun to the rider and companions.
Now 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... there seems
to be a hunger for adventure afoot in the land. If you're
interested in knowing more, let me know.
Second, the dozens of human intellects and over 100
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. We need help on some of the new bike
systems, and I get a lot of requests for consulting time...
there's plenty of work to share.
That's enough for now. As the months wear on and the
weather turns seductive here at the base of the Diablo Range... as
summer days 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, an 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. Soon the adventure will toggle
once again from intellectual to visceral and the real stories
shall resume.
In the meantime... cheers from the lab!
Steven K. Roberts, 98 Sudbury Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035
voice: 408-263-0660 GEnie: wordy CIS (rarely): 72757,15 uucp:
wordy@cup.portal.com well: wordy