The Microship Status Reports

Microship Status 11/22/93 by Steven K. Roberts

In This Issue:

Replacing Wires With Computers
Andrea And The Sound Board
Updates And Quests Various
San Diego Boat Show
Literature Received

Replacing Wires With Computers
Actually, this used to be a sort of joke in the Early Days: when I started noticing that computers were getting cheaper and smaller, the thought of them becoming cheaper than wire was amusing. Little did I realize that it would come true.
I thought it might be good to philosophize for a moment -- the evolving Microship network architecture reflects a number of somewhat radical techniques. When reliability, power, and weight are critical issues, things change somewhat...
Let me introduce a key concept. Computers really can be cheaper than wire: high-quality waterproof connectors are expensive and heavy, and cabling can be a major pain. When any number of 7.5 square-inch computers (drawing 10mA each and costing $55) can be dangled from a single bus, and when each of those can sense and control just about anything, it suddenly becomes very desirable to use them for even the most trivial tasks. We can run a single communication network around the boat, along with power and ground, and then shout into it: "hey, satellite station... turn yourself on!" and expect it to do just that.
If you want to see the other extreme, wander by the Microship lab sometime and I'll show you the control console from the Winnebiko II. Lots of switches, modes to rembember, kluges and hacks. It's dramatic and impressive, but way too complex and inflexible.
So as we launch into this group development project, you're going to see some very strange computer applications. In the simplest case, we'll have little New Micros 68HC11 FORTH boards that aren't even running any programs. Since the multidrop protocol connects us as needed to the console port of any node, a machine that's just sitting there in its interpreter loop can be instructed to read a port, perform a calculation, and report the results -- or toggle a bit and turn on some external device. Even in the more complex cases, all code can be downloaded from the host, making repair trivial and software changes even more so. This sort of approach is not unique to the Microship, by the way -- automakers are discussing fiber networks linking all peripherals, and the luxury yacht Marishiten, just launched by Nelson/Marek, uses a similar technique to minimize the traditional miles of cable and massive bays of circuit breakers. A touchscreen runs the whole ship.
I spoke with the president of New Micros this afternoon and he confirmed the company's support -- I'm now preparing an initial product wish-list. We will modify the design a bit further and introduce an intermediate processor to serve as the hub, with the 386 MCS layered on top for development, net connections, good graphics, and interpretation of the raw data present at the lower levels.

Andrea And The Sound Board
Saturday evening, after attending a koto recital on campus, I returned to the lab with Andrea Woo and presented her with the task of building a voice message board. This was a kit donated by my friend Bill Brown, WB8ELK, former editor of 73 Magazine. The PC board is based on the ISD1016 chip, a rather amazing device that is essentially a one-chip tape recorder. Using technology similar to that of an EEPROM, the device stores up to 16 seconds of speech as analog samples, recording or playing back from any of 160 starting points. The neat thing is that it's completely non-volatile -- you can record a message, put the chip on a shelf without power for years, and find your words intact when you plug it back in.
Bill has used them as automatic call generators for ham radio contesting, foxhunt transmitters, and most intriguing, a voice ID beacon aboard a balloon that flew to over 100,000 feet and could be heard on VHF over several states. (Bill also likes to send live video from balloons, but that's another story.)
On the Microship, this could be valuable as a low-power emergency beacon -- if I'm in trouble, I could tell the system to begin calling for help on a variety of frequencies, perhaps following the clear voice message with a synthesized lat-long sentence from the GPS. It could also be useful as part of the security system. But what we mostly used it for Saturday was training for Andrea -- it was her first attempt at hands-on hardware fabrication.
I'm pleased to say that it worked the first time -- she's now familiar with soldering, handling ICs, reading resistor color codes, and otherwise assembling electronic devices. But more important, she experienced one of the fundamental delights of this technology: slaving over a board for hours, inhaling acrid solder fumes and blearily decoding cryptic component values... then turning it on for the smoke test and seeing it actually DO something. Congratulations, Andrea!

Updates And Quests Various
I don't want to be a list admin, but I seem to have no choice. About 6 hours last week were spent dealing with a flood of Mailer Daemon messages generated by a short test posting to the new nomadness listserv. There are about 1,600 people on the list, and it has been months since my last posting (which was when someone else was managing it). Nightmare. The worst bounce was from MCI Mail, whose bogus software refused to deliver to ANY of the 20 or so recipients because three of them bounced... actually telling me to edit them out of my header and try again!
TJ Tyler, Robb Walker, and I had dinner tonight -- discussing the Microship's internal frame structure, trailering, FEA, materials selection, and related issues. Although we're heading into the least productive time of the year, the task before us now is to establish the mechanical engineering team ASAP and get going on these critical structural issues. If you are interested in being part of this, please email TJ immediately <tj@cassfos01.UCSD.EDU>.
One of my immediate tasks is to research aircraft landing gear. If we're lucky, we may find that someone has already created something close to what we need, optimized for light weight. If you know anything about this or have ties to a local subculture of pilots, please let me know.
My major quest at the moment is for a manager -- the need is becoming critical. If you know of anyone who wants to get involved, initially part-time (for pay), please put them in touch. Prior business experience, good management skills, and sharp communications are a must.

San Diego Boat Show
Sunday, TJ and I went to the San Diego Boat show at the Convention Center. This turned out to be extremely worthwhile: lots of vendors of relevant components, a chance to compare competing products, and plenty of boats to look at. We clambered about on a prototype F/31 from Corsair, studying their folding aka assemblies and crossbeam structure, and spent a few hours wandering the aisles, gathering literature and learning. I also met David Crane (of D.F. Crane Associates, specializing in nautical computing) -- he expressed interest in helping us with live satellite image reception without having to be connected to a server on the Internet or suffering the noise of HF weatherfax.
Rather than enumerate it all here, I'm listing the new information in the LITERATURE RECEIVED section below. In general, it was a good reminder that getting out and making contacts is critical, no matter how cushy life is here in my daily routine on campus!

Literature Received
Cole-Parmer new products flyer (laboratory instruments)
New Micros -- additional literature on Easy-A protocol and 68HC11 boards
AutoCAD World newspaper
British Columbia tourism material
DF Crane Nautical Computing catalog: fax, navigation, and much more
Radar Flag brochure: American flags with integral radar reflectors
Furuno full-line catalog: radar, depth, comm, satellite, GPS
BOAT/US catalog & newsletter: claims to be the Price Club of boating
Aquatilis water bike flyer
Watercraft trailer flyer
AstroLite battery flyer
Ocean Marine Insurance flyer
Eternity water filtration catalog
Performance Sailing magazine (Oct 93)
PC Weatherman weather software flyer
Starlight night vision binocular flyer
Fleming self-steering gear flyer
Sea Recovery reverse osmosis watermaker brochure
Interlux boat paint guide
Detco varnish flyer
Venus-Gusmer sprayup, injection, casting, and fabrication catalog
Shower Anywhere portable shower flyer
Differential Corrections (new GPS differential method, by subscription)
Sea Tow towing service flyer
Icom IC-M15 waterproof handheld VHF flyer
C Cushions custom vinyl-coated cushions flyer
West Marine holiday specials