Latest Posts (May 11, 2017): Lifestyle Geekery aboard Datawake. Recent posts cover the Ship Weather Station, the D-STAR OpenSPOT, and the ship console. There is a detailed talk with BEHEMOTH of over an hour from 1999. Current news is always at the blog and I have a Facebook page for the Datawake boat project as well as one for the High-Tech Nomad book.
Here’s a free sample of the book, with 3 chapters. Current article count: 543
“Art without engineering is dreaming;
Engineering without art is calculating.”
— Steven K. Roberts
Since 1983, I have devoted all available resources to adventure, geek expressionism, and gonzo engineering. This has fueled a playful life of building and traveling with technomadic contraptions, writing about everything from the underlying tech to the romance of the road.
After a decade and 17,000 miles aboard a computerized recumbent bicycle, I turned my attention to building an amphibian pedal/solar/sail micro-trimaran… while 580-pound BEHEMOTH, the final incarnation of the bike, became a permanent exhibit at the Computer History Museum.
BEHEMOTH console Macintosh on the road in 1991. Control used ultrasonic head mouse built into helmet (see photo above) as well as a chord keyboard in the handlebars. I used this to write articles and email while on the road.
The Microship project took a decade, and then it was time for a new phase… creating a starship of sorts, large enough for full-time adventure with an on-board lab and a suite of tools for data collection, underwater exploration, circuit design, 3D printing, milling, music and video production, communications, and more.
This site is the collection of all documents related to this entire series of projects (along with earlier and unrelated work, some historical tidbits, product reviews, and how-to material).
Thousands of items are slated to be included to this archive and given dated blog pages that match their actual publication or event dates. As such, “latest update” is relevant only to new postings (with an RSS feed). The photos below offer a few starting points, with related posts and the usual WordPress menus/categories/tags.
My gizmological contraptions in reverse chronological order:
My new boat, Datawake, at her slip in February, 2016. She carries 60U of lab console space, piano, 3D printer, holodeck, movie scanner, mini-mill, SDR, audio/video production, NAS, electronics lab, ROV, and lots of embedded geekery that contrasts nicely with this classic 1974 Delta 50 by Vic Franck. IEEE Spectrum just did a short video introduction, although the console has grown considerably since the August 2016 shoot
The console aboard Datawake… click photo for details
Shacktopus brings a rich set of power-related tools into a single portable package, and is now a backup power system aboard Datawake.
Nomadness is an Amazon 44 steel pilothouse sailboat that was my nautical substrate until late 2015. (photo by Wojtek Wacowski, with a little help from NASA)
Microship is an amphibian pedal/solar/sail micro-trimaran, shown docked in Friday Harbor, Washington in 2013. This was a ten-year development project (1993-2003)… click photo for more.
This is Polaris, my mobile lab built into a 24-foot Wells-Cargo trailer. Click photo for details.
A brief interlude in 2004-5, this system was intended to incorporate my technomadic toolset into a backpack. It had an industrial Linux board, WiFi, cellular, accelerometer and other sensors, GPS, PalmOS user interface, HF ham rig, TNC, speech synth, ambient mic, LiIon battery, DTMF decoder, and local I/O… sort of a monster paleo-smartphone. (Clicking pic opens a block diagram in a new tab.)
Bubba carried APRS location tracking, packet and voice ham radio, satellite phone, nav tools, & a small solar power system. I did a few mini-expeditions in Northwest waters.
The 580-pound BEHEMOTH bicycle, circa 1991. This was the final bike version, a 3-year project based in Silicon Valley. (photo by Bob Ponzoni)
Bonus shot of BEHEMOTH, just to show the monster on the road. I was doing a filming with the French TF-1 network, and it was freezing in Joshua Tree.
The Winnebiko II covered 6,000 miles from 1986-1988, and included a handlebar keyboard to allow writing while riding. (photo by Karen Greene)
The original Winnebiko in January, 1984 – already 3,000 miles into an adventure that would total 17,000 miles. (photo by Katie Peden)
Now in the Computer History Museum (along with the BEHEMOTH bicycle), this is the front panel of an 8008-based personal computer I designed and built in 1974. Click photo for full schematics.
OK, this one is a stretch, but maybe it had something to do with my later obsession with geeky recumbent bicycles pulling trailers. This is how I mowed the old family place, long ago… click photo to see a 1-minute video digitized from a 1966 home movie of the rig.