Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #05525
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Wouter Brok w.j.m.brok@stud.tue.nl
Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 21:03:47 +0200
Subject: [alt-beam] Coupled Oscillators
Hello everybody,
Today I wrote a little piece of text in which I try to describe things like
oscillation, oscillators, frequency, phase, coupling, coupling-strength,
etc. so that it should be understandable for those who don't know much
about this yet.
If you are a newbie, or if you would like to know more about these things I
recommend you to have a look at BEAM Heretics
(http://www.serve.com/heretics/).
Go to BEAM people, Wouter Brok and then
to Coupled Bicores. The third message is what I wrote today.
In the future I will write more of these messages if they are appreciated
and by this I hope I provide the (I guess especially young) members of the
list with some more theoretic background information.
Regards,
Wouter Brok.
5526 Mon, 02 Aug 1999 19:19:20 -0700 [alt-beam] Re: Maxim chip doubler... beam@sgiblab.sgi.com Sean Rigter It's great to hear from one of the Founders! Your VDP bot is no ugly duckling
in the eyes of BEAM beholders!
The 7660 chip is synonymous with the term voltage doubler and was the standard
"off the shelf" solution from the mid 80's on until the recent proliferarion
of improved converters. I actually got some samples of ICL7660's at a
seminar when the part was "first" introduced. The HBS (happy birth song) is
the now obsolete relatively complex birthday card microcontroller chip used
as a trigger for the 2N3904/06 SE (which I can see near the large caps on
each PCB).
Having missed the opportunity of being there "first" in BEAM land, I'm
curious about the BEAM design philosophy in 1994 and since. A little
archeological dig (forgive the pun) to peek under the foundation and
cornerstones of BEAM land to better understand the early stages of evolution
of that technology and it's founders.
Was there ever a BEAM design criterion for using the "simplest" technology to
achieve a given functional objective ie Occam's Razor?
I always asumed there was and I use this approach myself for aesthetic
reasons but scalabilty and cost would be factors in more serious applications.
Applying this criterion results in an elegant, low complexity, high
functionality (by my definition : BEAM) design. Such a design is conceptually
easier to relate to biological and other principles and may also be easier to
transfer to other technologies.
regards
wilf
Andrew Miller wrote:
> >From the "I thought of it First!" files....:-)
>
> Maxxim makes a lovely little Voltage doubler MX7660 ... two
> suport Capacitors is all it needs...up to 96% efish at low
> current levels... used mostly for creating the needed + - 5V
> for LCDs...
>
> attached is a pic of a Photovore dated May 1994 (Yeesh I've been
> doing this WAY too long) that used ther 7660 and a modified HBS
> solar engine. (please excuse the dust it's been on a shelf for a
> LONG time)
>
> the theory was this...(arcaic tech alert!)
>
> HBS is a time based SE and the HBS works down as low as .8V but
> will fire a SE as low as 1.1V but the pager motors don't really
> do anything useful until 2V so in low light levels the HBS
> engine was firing away and the bot wasn't going anywhere.
>
> So add the 7660 in and run the HBS on the Grnd to +V and run
> the remainder of the SE (including power cap) on -V to +V so by
> the time the HBS sees 1.1V the rest of the SE has 2.2 V waiting
> to go...
>
> actually worked pretty good...
>
> It's My first ( and _ThE_ first as far as I know) to run in
> Flourecent office lighting...
>
> Bear in mind this was WAY before the favorite Sunceram cells
> were available and the 1381 was discovered.
>
> all4nw
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Name: VDP.jpg
> VDP.jpg Type: JPEG Image (image/jpeg)
> Encoding: base64
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