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Add a tilt sensor to your PalmPilot
Dan Wineman writes "Here are instructions for enabling your Pilot to sense gravity and acceleration. You need a steady hand with a soldering iron, and it definitely voids anything resembling a warranty, but imagine the possibilities! There's already an Oxyd clone (like 2-D Marble Madness) that supports it, and I suppose a pedometer application might be doable. Remember, never ask a geek "why"; just nod your head and back away slowly... "
I bet this would allow you to do something like Itsy's Ro ck 'n' Scroll.
The /. effect seems to be very effective :)
-- Jochen
I can't help but note that this would make an effective
motion detector for a bomb or similar application.
...is a Mac lover but since he went to the Sam Ockman School of Fashion as a teenager (gotta love those orange shoelaces and beach towel 'round the neck) we'll forgive him for being a Mac bigot.
acceleration measurements, if made accurately and combined with a compass, could pinpoint location just as effectively as GPS. guided missles and the such used this type of navigation before GPS was around.
is there a port for gnulix?
Be kind of an expensive motion sensor, eh? .10 cent sensor :P
Actually you would probably be *buying* a
motion sensor anyway to install inside
the pp. So you'd have a
with a $500 enclosure!
I'm not sure cost would really be an issue to a bomber. Couldn't they just add the extra amount onto their ransom demand?
As anybody who has ever tried to measure with any accuracy based on acceleration or motion sensing knows.... no way.
Sure it's vaguely possible, but next to impossible, esp. with something like a Pilot.
With GPS you can always re-center yourself. With inertial navigation, you can't. Esp. with acceleration sensing. An error of 0.1% over any reasonable length of time would throw off the accuracy by an enormous amount.
Still cool tho.
...and their slow networks.
What about, a after crime location device...
;)
You put it in your car and if your car get
stole, you just use your GPS on your Palm Pilot
with a modem to get the position of your car.
Well this way, my 1994 Toyota Tercel will be
secure...
Here in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), they are doing
it.
I don't find the URL, but its around somewhere...
Which would work nicely if your Palm was constantly either accelerating or moving...inertial navigation is virtually useless for point location because of cumulative errors that build up during a day of starting/stopping motion (most error happens with inertial sensors when v=0 [i.e. dead stop] since they work by measuring acceleration); IN works very nicely for keeping to trajectories and plotting courses, but for basic navigation and location it'd be pretty much pointless. Doesn't anybody make/hack GPS modules for Palms anyway?
Whoa! Now we can have improved Etch-A-Sketch emulation! After you're done drawing your picture, just shake to erase!
Just think what a Beowulf cluster of these would be like.
;)
Er... yeah.
http://www.lojack.com
Indeed, the /. effect hit us fast and it hit us hard.
Now the performance should be fair.
Oh, please. You "never touched a bread board" kids make me tired. Get the hell away from that electronic keyboard and go feed the chickens.
If you can turn an AS400 and a ham radio into a remote detonator, though, you can come back and lick my boots.
Does this mean that if you drop it, it can scream?
Cool!
I've thought about doing this a year ago..
Problem is the precision of the sensor, and other factors that create small errors that will accumulate over time. It may work, but at best, only for short periods of time
Guilty as charged.
Up until a year ago, my wallet still contained the old high school I.D. card complete with Buckwheat "O-TAY!" beach towell wrapped around my neck.
I think that particular style needs to be reborn.
Same goes for orange shoelaces. I'll have to talk to Ockman and see if he will help revive the orange laces.
It's technically possible to get very accurate Inertial info, but a palm pilot won't do as a sensor.
Just think of it this way:
* INS = Blindfold someone and try to direct them from the front door of the house to the bathroom, all in one go.
* GPS = Direct them every few steps.
Sure, the first one is possible, but you have to be extremely precise to do it. Another good example is this:
Try marking an X on the floor. Put your foot on it. Close your eyes. Take 3 steps, turn around, take 3 steps, turn around, and repeat the above 10 times. See how far you are from the X.
You need 3 gyros and 3 accelereters to make an effective inertial navigation device. That's just the way the physics works.
Also, when GPS and intertial nav are used together, neither one is "primary" or "backup", they work together as a closed-loop feedback system. The GPS uses the inertial position to help aquire satellites and as a "hint" during high-dynamics situations (rolls, sharp turns, etc.) Inertial systems use the GPS position to counter gyro drift. If one fails, the system works in a degraded mode, and how that's handled depends on the type of device.
Why would anyone want your Turd-Cell?
and the boxes that house the gyros are about as big as your mother's inkjet, not to mention a few hundred g's. and that's for the old mechanical style that take 15-20 minutes to warm up. the kind marine c130's use. I'm sorry to say, I have no experience with anything else. all you air force chumps out there probably are more familiar with the newer laser ones.
This would be a wonderfull head tracking system for mice for wearables, and up/down/left/right looking in quake :)
The inertial navigation system in US fighter jets utilizes a Laser Ring Gyro. They're expensive, too big to fit on a PalmPilot, and they still drift. Pilots always use an external nav source if available (i.e., TACAN or GPS).
Cruise missiles (pre-GPS) used inertial navigation to get pointed in the right direction, but they actually use an image map of the terrain to navigate to the target. When the terrain is flat and featureless (e.g., desert) they have this bad habit of going stupid and winding up a hundred miles away from the target.
In either case, GPS is the way to go -- assuming nobody jams it...
Okay, selective availability sucks, but it doesn't suck that bad. The real effect is to make your fix wander in lazy figure-8's in a 100m diameter around your real position.
If that's not good enough for you you can use:
- Differential GPS - real-time accuracy to 3-5m as long as you are within range of a correctly surveyed and operating ground station.
- Carrier Phase Tracking - Used in surveying. Gives sub-millimeter accuracy but requires offline post-processing to tell you where you were.
And both of those function with selective availability on.
I remember seeing this done, years ago...
on a bicycle.... http://www.microship.com/
has details... look for BEHEMOTH.
"You have to think of start up costs. What bank is going to finance you?"
Whichever one doesn't want to go kablooie!
If I don't have my Pilot with me when reminder alarms go off, it would be great to be reminded next time I pick it up.
Hopefully Rob won't get slapped with the bill for upgrading all of the "offramps" from the backbones due to his omnipresent and unpredictable
Slightly more on topic, it's too bad the little Pilot didn't have better protection from bumps and jostles. My rhinoskin is *great* for protection... Now if I could only program the little thing better
Install Linux.
Install tilt sensor.
Connect to Lego Mindstorm.
Connect to wireless modem or radio unit.
Whee self-navigating robots.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
Hey, as someone who tried to sodder a modem for a TI-85 calculator, how in the world can I criticize? This is great.
I was thinking of another "poor man's" GPS a while ago: use radio station triangulation to calculate position.
You can get radio station databases from the FCC including transmitting frequency, power and location. Next, using an FM receiver chip, you create a signal strength map of the current location (find the strongest stations, their frequencies and the relative strengths). Then you do a probability analysis against the station database and try to find the most likely location that this signal strength map would occur.
It's all theory and it might work, but then again, it might not. I don't know if enough ambiguity would exist to make the approach futile (i.e. more than one place having similar enough signal maps). Besides, you need enough processing power to do these calculations, and sufficient storage capacity to hold the database. It might be cheaper (and certainly a lot more accurate) to just get a cheap GPS chipset. Those are coming on the market now, like in new cell phones.
We might feel a bit defensive about outsiders making snide comments, but we should have a healthy dose of self-criticism. Let's face it, Europe has completely missed the Internet boat. We were so extremely lethargic about the communcations revolution, and many places are still completely clueless. For crying out loud, in most European countries you can barely afford to check your email twice a day, let alone surf or--heaven forbid--download the latest Linux distribution. Till recently we didn't even have our own Pan-European backbone, with most traffic going via the USA.
We might have a lot to brag about, but regarding communications we should extract our collective thumbs both out of our mouths and asses and get to work.
Hmm... how about..
[Palm Pilot scheduler/program log]
or "A day in the life of a terrorist palm pilot program."
6:30am [palm-auto-signal bomb-net to attention]
6:45am Wake up alarm
7:00am [palm-auto-signal check house perimeter logs]
7:15am Show latest horse race results.
7:30am Activate lawn sprinklers.
8:00am [palm-auto-signal internet-email-threat send to predetermined list of people]
8:15am [palm-auto-signal check bomb-net readiness]
8:20am Send page to "boss" signalling readiness.
8:30am [palm-auto-signal respond to email's with demands]
9:00am Analyse response emails for lack of belief.
9:05am Detonate bombs in areas lacking belief.
9:10am Re-send threats and demands.
9:30am Record all emails and analyse for straggling believers.
10:00am Page "boss" with new updated status.
10:30am Send page to dry cleaner to have suits delivered to suite.
10:45am Phone local florist to deliver flowers to address.
11:00am Re-send threats and give instructions on how, where, and when to deliver on demands.
11:30am Send page to "boss" about results.
12:00pm Order out for pizza.
12:05pm "Boss" returns home.
12:10pm "Boss" receives pizza.
12:30pm "Boss" recieves dry cleaning.
01:00pm incoming call for "boss" from "girlfriend". Flowers recieved.
01:30pm Funds transfer detected. Routing funds to private account.
01:45pm Funds retransferred to seperate accounts.
02:00pm Previous funds transactions deleted.
02:15pm Make reservation for limmo. Reserve seats for movie/show.
03:00pm display reservation dates/times for "boss".
03:15pm send page to "boss"'s girlfriend.
04:00pm Girlfriend arrives.
04:05pm Reservations printed out.
04:15pm Limmo arrives.
04:20pm House empty. Turn on porch lights.
05:00pm Sync discs. Explode remaining bombs. Send thank-you emails to threat targets. Erase dummy transaction fund accounts.
05:05pm power-down/recharge.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
Isn't all technology Cool and completely Useless?
~Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question.
Guided missiles still use this kind of navigation (along with gravity contour maps) as a backup system in case the GPS fails.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Well.. I suppose it's worth a try, I don't use mine that much...
I'd like to see an infrared scanner for the palm pilot.. one that plugs in and will actually show the infrared picture on teh screen. That's be pretty cool... make it part of the Star Trek tricorder program.
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
tilt
tilt
Game over !!
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
there are watches that use movement to recharge themselves.
maybe someone will find someway to do the same with your Palm P ?
then you'll be able to say :
I go out to recharge my "batteries"...
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Hey, cool! Now I can do the hexapod without worrying about how to get touch sensor inputs into the pilot. Just run into something, and the shock of inpact will be cought. Makes turning a PalmPilot into a RobotPilot much easier.
it only measures in two axes, and has no rotational sensors, so even if it had the precision of a real INS, it would be useless for navigation. it can't tell if you turn or climb.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
whhoooops...hit enter to fast...
i got here under 10 minutes after this was posted and the site is allready inaccessible....
Check out my site at www.jonsnews.com
Now you can really tell your boss to "Shake it real hard to reboot it" ;-)
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Now if we could only slap electromag sensors on it, and maybe a toaster.
"I can't believe I put on pants for this"