![]() ![]() ![]() But if the XMPP system is down or out of range, commands could also be issued over the packet system or even the Pi wifi to control the craft. If the XMPP system is online, commands can be issued to control the craft. And the Pi Zero W also has a wifi adapter that I can turn on (using XMPP) for SSH console communication during testing and programming. TrillSat's primary human-computer interface is a custom XMPP server running over wifi on an ESP8266 which also becomes a gateway to its secondary human-computer interface, a 2-meter AX.25 multi-user packet radio/APRS system with a packet BBS server, running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W. THUMP is actually the fourth human-computer interface in #TrillSat. ![]() I'm neither a musician nor a physicist, but I do have a good grasp of logical information processing, and so I use my discrete tools, as best as I can, to bound and observe those wiggly, squiggly things. Waves are hard, even for musicians to master, and much of our academic understanding lies in the oscillating, dynamic world of differential equations. And the corpus we have on this subject is immense (and a joy to research), but I do not claim to be an expert. Each medium has unique characteristics that have to be understood, and the tether has unique characteristics.Īnd, interestingly, many of these characteristics have been understood for centuries, since a simple 1-dimensional tether, anchored at both ends, form a vibrating string which has provided musicians, mathematicians and physicists a simple way to discover and study WAVES. And even in space, both end-over-end rotation and "gravity-gradient stabilization" can keep a tether taut, and because the tether is the medium, a gas is not needed for wave propagation. They are usually divided into mediums or their absence/combinations (land, air, water, and maybe even space). Think of the armed forces of different countries, for instance. When using the tether for capstan locomotion, the craft acts like a buoyant ship or airship on a medium, but when the tether is used for Morse code communication, THUMP shows that the tether really is a distinct medium. It's an oblique capstan-driven cablebot, anchored at both ends, that sails, on what I like to call, a "tether sea". A traditional hoistbot with a winch and take-up reel is kind of like a helicopter, but TrillSat is a little different. ![]() It creates its own serial bus protocol (using Morse, of course!) and has zero reliance on other protocols, which is nice.Įbb and flow, flotsam and jetsam, dits and dahs. A resource-efficient Morse code algorithm and decoder was created for an ATtiny microcontroller, which can also be daisy-chained to multiple microcontrollers for asynchronous, parallel operation in more complex cases where different CPUs control different subsystems (which was the case with my prototype). The operator simply "thumps" the tether (hammering, plucking, or yanking) to instruct the robot to move or perform any desired function within its capabilities, and the machine vibrates back a response. THUMP requires only a 3-axis accelerometer interrupt for sensing and uses the hoist/winch motor for haptic pulse generation. And instead of only hoisting something up or down, as in the helicopter/diver example, robotic hoists can also be inverted, anchored at one end, and the hoist platform itself can be instructed to move up or down (a vertical hoistbot, or a horizontal/oblique winchbot or cablebot) turning it into a tethered flying, or even submersible, craft. THUMP is a low-cost, low-power system that uses a subset of International Morse Code for the full A-Z alphabet. But such a system could be applied to a variety of different types of craft, and building it has provided fascinating insights. It is an experimental subsystem that I built to communicate and control a small, solar-powered, self-propelled, tethered robotic radio platform, in cases where its primary radio systems go down. Parallel Operation Using a Single Pin and Bus Protocolįirst, please let me clarify that, at this time, THUMP is in no way suitable for critical emergency situations. The Problem With Using Acceleration Pulses to Send Morse Code ![]()
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