Circuit Cellar Ink 73
August 1996

Table of Contents

2 Ken Davidson	Task Manager Luxury to Utility
6	Reader I/O Letters to the Editor
8 Harv Weiner	New Product News
12 Chuck McManis	Sensing Obstacles with Mobile Robots Critical to mobility is knowing where you are. Chuck takes an in-depth look at three sensing technologies: switch bumpers, infrared light, and ultrasonics. He closes with a glimpse at radar and stereoscopic vision.
18 John Piccirillo	Designing Marvin Building autonomous mobile robots is a challenging task. But, John succeeds with style. Listen up for the design and construction of Marvin, a winner in this year's Firefighting Home Robot Contest.
24 Ingo Cyliax	Modular Robot Controllers Ingo describes some of the experiments for Stiquito II, a robot with Nitinol-wire-propelled legs. He looks specifically at the design strategies necessary for a controller system to be flexible enough for such robots.
34 Graham Moss Ross McMillan Ken Mardle	In-Circuit Emulators Part 2: Debuggers for Embedded Systems After spending last month looking at software simulation and ROM emulation, the authors spend this month zeroing in on the more sophisticated monitor-based debuggers and true in-circuit emulators.
42 Ed Nisley	Firmware Furnace Tuning Up: A Digital Zero-beat Meter Hams communicate by tuning their radios to the same frequency. But, Ed has a lead ear. His new project listens to the transceiver's audio output and indicates which way to turn the knob for that Oh-So-Sweet same pitch.
48 Jeff Bachiochi	From the Bench Nonintrusive Current Monitoring This series begins with winding toroidal current sensors for monitoring power consumption in the home. Jeff designs front-end signal conditioning with an expandable multiplexer for use with the low-cost Domino microcomputer.
54 Tom Cantrell	Silicon Update Spring Fling With spring comes trade shows -- and lots of them! Through Tom, we get to walk through the Embedded Systems Conference East, Sensors Expo, and the PCI spring show. Come catch the highlights.
Embedded PC 64 Harv Weiner	Nouveau PC
Embedded PC 68 Brad Reed	$500 Internet Browser in a Box Who hasn't become entangled in the World Wide Web? It's growing and changing every day as more people gain access. This $500 set-top box is going to launch another segment of the population. A real spider's feast.
Embedded PC 74 Scott Baisch Kevin Smith	WinLight Part 2: The Application Programming for WinLight or Windows requires development tools and techniques we may not be so familiar with. Here's a real-world clock application program and the tools needed to write, test, and debug it.
Embedded PC 82 John Kates	PC/104 Quarter Precision Timing with PC/104 Real-time applications need accurate timekeeping. John shows how affordable precision time is available to portable and mobile systems based on PC/104. No more external synchronized clocks with bulky parallel interfaces.
Embedded PC 87 Fred Eady	Applied PCs Multiaxis Stepper Motors Continued Fred walks us from his high-school slide-rule days into the modern world where milling machines use embedded intelligence coupled with motors and encoders. Take a turn at the wheel of this hands-on application.
81	Advertiser's Index
93 Ken Davidson	ConnecTime -- Excerpts from the Circuit Cellar BBS
104 Steve Ciarcia	Priority Interrupt How to Not Take It in the Chops

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