Re, the third state. if you put a resistor divider on a pin and set it to input you now have a voltage level of one half vcc. So you can now signal 3 states on that pin to an external device. Use 2 pins and you can signal 9 states, 3 pins 27 states, 4 pins 81 states. So you can get more information out than you can in binary. Of course decoding it might be tricky.[PHP][/PHP]
I study Mike Green's replies. He has added some useful information here. I also study Phil Pilgrim's replies. I will not pile on Humanoido because senior programmers in this thread are still discussing stuff I need to learn.
Humanoido,
Thanks for proving my point, since you were unable to successfully refute any of my observations.
As far as your "completed project", read Ken Gracey's comments
The Completed Projects forum is supposed to be for near-finished projects that include schematics, code, bill of materials, photos/videos, and a write-up. Many forum members have posted works in progress and incomplete projects.
Our plan for handling this is by encouraging work in progress to be posted in the most applicable product forum.
These forums are a great learning tool when used properly, but
I'm glad they provide a member "Ignore list".
Humanoido: "limbotronic", brilliant, i love it. Re, the third state. if you put a resistor divider on a pin and set it to input you now have a voltage level of one half vcc. So you can now signal 3 states on that pin to an external device. Use 2 pins and you can signal 9 states, 3 pins 27 states, 4 pins 81 states. So you can get more information out than you can in binary. Of course decoding it might be tricky.
Heater, thanks for details. This is the exact defining technique I had in mind, plus a new name to go with it! In the Limbotronic System, base 3 is very useful for the pin states and can be followed with a program. There is one pin on the Prop chip that is already is a state of Limbo degree, and that would be pin 31 when the chip is connected to USB. So with 31 usable Limbotronic pins in a single chip, the number of possible combinations is over a trillion
617,673,396,383,947
If we could disconnect USB, then all 32 pins are usable and the number goes up to
1,235,345,972,567,894
which is now over one quadrillion possible combinations using a single prop chip. The Limbotronic Technique works here because it only requires the state wiring of 32 pins and software does the rest.
As Humanoido already mentioned, he did not post his prop tower in the Completed Projects Forum. He posted it in the Test Forum. It was finally moved to the Completed Projects Forum because so many people were commenting about it that a moderator moved the thread from the Test Forum to the Complete Projects Forum. As far as I know Humanoido did not request the move.
I'm not sure if his prop tower does much right now but I can assure you, it has made me often ponder about possible applications of multiple props working together.
Humanoido,
I don't think you should take Leon's comment about entertaining contraptions as a negative. Gaming computer, roller coasters, TVs, race cars, Blue Angel jets are also entertaining contraptions.
My main complaint about the Parallax Forums is they are too much fun to read and they take time I should be using to program my Propellers.
Back on topic (sort of),
SparkFun had/has? a tutorial that attached wire to pins which were left floating and the input from the wires were used to generate random numbers which where then used to select messages displayed on a LCD to make an electronic "Magic 8 Ball."
Back off topic,
TinkersALot,
I've read several papers about "dowsing rods." Apparently they are very good a detecting spots the operator suspects as an item of interest. I'd be amazed if they could pass "double blind" type of study.
Dowsing doesn't work in a double-blind situation. I saw an interesting TV program last week which included dowsers trying to detect water, their results were what one would expect by chance.
Many years ago some researchers developed a three state logic system. Instead of bits they had trits. I can't remember any other details, though.
A TRIT in base 3 is similar to a bit in base two. The three state logic system in base 3 is called a Ternary or Trinary base system. It is useful to use Trits, Tribbles, and Trytes. There is a TriINTERCAL programming language that defines unsigned 10-trit (0 to 59048) and 20-trit words. There are numerous Trinary Computers and architecture described on the internet.
There's a guy in our local Public Works Department who uses dowsing rods for locating pipes under the street. I saw him working once with the bent metal rods and a can of spray paint to mark the pavement, so I stopped to chat with him. He claimed 100% success, even where electronic means fail. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. My left brain and right brain are still in conflict over that one!
...I'm not quite sure what to make of it. My left brain and right brain are still in conflict over that one!...
Does that mean you're in limbo on this?
You know, a wise man once said that Limbotronics is thee wave of the future. Are you prepared to take that next big leap into the vast, scintillating ocean of wishy-washy?
Duane, you should try it yourself. I think you'll be amazed. I don't know how/why it works, but the man had never even been to my property before and it worked for him, and it works for me too. I don't make any more claims than that. Just thought that it was another inderminent state kind of item and fit right in here.
though, I don't remember if his name was heisenburg at the moment [har!]
Phil, Does that mean you're in limbo on this?
You know, a wise man once said that Limbotronics is thee wave of the future. Are you prepared to take that next big leap into the vast, scintillating ocean of wishy-washy?
ElectricAye: Does Phil's left and right brain exist in the plane of limbo? Let's examine this. In Limbotronics, the rising and falling of the Trinary State does indeed follow the rising and falling of oscillatory scintillating wishy-washy ocean waves as we cycle through the 1,235,346,792,567,894 possible 32-pin prop head combinations. Does Phil rise and fall. Yes. Is he wishy-washy? Yes. Is he a prop head with a quadrillion possibilities. Yes. But he is stuck in the twilight zone of left-brain/right-brain limbo and can't get it up high enough to get out. His only resource is to create a surfing formula and ride out the big one!
Since the brain is in some regards an electromagnetic device, and there are pulses bouncing back and forth between the atmosphere and the earths surface constantly (Schumann resonance) which the brain does respond to, it may be possible for the brain to perceive some electromagnetic difference when passing over a pipe with water in it, as moving water would possibly have some electromagnetic effect on the pipe. So, the rods moving towards each other makes no sense at any level as to why the water/pipe would cause the rods to move towards each other, however if the brain were to perceive some difference in magnetism underground or otherwise, it could cause the hands to move the rods towards each other as a response. The rods moving become an effect of the brain perceiving something, not the the actual 'sensor'.
A test would be to have the rods attached to some remote device that moves over the pipes, with the human operator at a distance and stationary.
Dowsing simply doesn't work under properly controlled conditions. There is no evidence that the brain can respond to magnetic or electromagnetic fields of that nature, and moving water can't generate a field that can be detected by the brain.
Leon,
"Dowsing doesn't work under properly controlled conditions" is a broad statement with too few details and using "the scientific method" without careful, mutually agreed upon conditions involved is equally as useless as not.
There are (and have been) some very experienced researchers working in other areas of what's lumped under psychic research and they're very thoughtful about the difficulty of doing research in this area. Their general opinions is that there's something going on that has to do with non-local perceptions that doesn't fit what's considered "generally accepted scientific principles" by most other than some quantum physicists. It's hard to study because it often involves subjective phenomena and sometimes is supported by verifiable information that just falls outside of whatever study parameters are used, thus is discarded even though it's otherwise valid.
Generally, when studies in these areas are done, the results are prejudged. Often, if the studies are good ones and the results contradict "accepted dogma", the authors are savaged. This has happened many times in the history of science. A recent famous case involves research into causes of gastric ulcers where a researcher had the temerity to suggest that these might be caused by a previously unknown bacterium. He was villified in the literature and at conferences and became a pariah for years. Later he was proven absolutely correct.
I'm reminded of Dr. Russell Targ's published studies on clairvoyance treated as an information channel. He applied information theory methods to double blinded analyses of "remote viewing" information and concluded that, whatever communication channel is involved, the statistical properties of the information conveyed follow the same rules as with any very noisy information channel. That's a pretty minimal claim, based on good evidence. He made no claims about what channel was involved nor its physical principles, just that information was transferred and it had certain properties of density and reliability and that those properties were subjected to the same sort of analysis used for other noisy channels (like outer planet space probe downlinks).
Sorry, Mike, but none of that pseudo-science has ever been accepted by the scientific community. One or two papers have been published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, but they have subsequently been discredited.
When I was reading psychology at Birkbeck, Targ and Puthoff's favourite magician, Uri Geller, was invited to visit the physics department. The psychology department wanted to send a couple of observers, but Geller refused to turn up if any psychologists were present. Geller has details of his performance on his web site. James Randi has replicated some of his tricks live on TV.
There have actually been several attempts at three-state or as it's generally called ternary computing; it makes some things simpler and more compact, but seems to get out of hand when you consider what logic gates to build and how to use them. Oblig Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer
is there a way to get more function out of less pins? Yes!
Search for Charlieplexing or GugaPlexing. Those make use of tristate capable pins in floating input mode and use a minimum amount of "overhead" hardware (some diodes and/or transistors).
Much more is possible with I2C/OneWire/SPI port expanders or almost endless shift registers at the cost of max. switching frequency.
Does a resistor network on a single output give a third state? No, as long as you can´t disconnect it from the pin during operation (would require another pin). Search for resistor (R/2R) ladder DACs.
For the "psychic" science: all pain is human (made), therefore it is difficult to get this factor out when humans make studies about human behavior or results of human behavior.
A friend of mine once said, medical studies are the most biased ones. I think this is because it is as hard or even harder to proof the opposite of a statement as it was to create that statement in a study. It is a science in a field that is far away from being understood, what remains is already empirically proven knowledge in an ever changing field.
Comments
Re, the third state. if you put a resistor divider on a pin and set it to input you now have a voltage level of one half vcc. So you can now signal 3 states on that pin to an external device. Use 2 pins and you can signal 9 states, 3 pins 27 states, 4 pins 81 states. So you can get more information out than you can in binary. Of course decoding it might be tricky.[PHP][/PHP]
http://pdfcast.org/pdf/what-is-the-most-efficient-base
It's also useful for representing "don't care" states (*), along with 0 and 1, which can be handy in pattern-matching applications.
-Phil
Thanks for proving my point, since you were unable to successfully refute any of my observations.
As far as your "completed project", read Ken Gracey's comments
The Completed Projects forum is supposed to be for near-finished projects that include schematics, code, bill of materials, photos/videos, and a write-up. Many forum members have posted works in progress and incomplete projects.
Our plan for handling this is by encouraging work in progress to be posted in the most applicable product forum.
These forums are a great learning tool when used properly, but
I'm glad they provide a member "Ignore list".
617,673,396,383,947
If we could disconnect USB, then all 32 pins are usable and the number goes up to
1,235,345,972,567,894
which is now over one quadrillion possible combinations using a single prop chip. The Limbotronic Technique works here because it only requires the state wiring of 32 pins and software does the rest.
As Humanoido already mentioned, he did not post his prop tower in the Completed Projects Forum. He posted it in the Test Forum. It was finally moved to the Completed Projects Forum because so many people were commenting about it that a moderator moved the thread from the Test Forum to the Complete Projects Forum. As far as I know Humanoido did not request the move.
I'm not sure if his prop tower does much right now but I can assure you, it has made me often ponder about possible applications of multiple props working together.
Humanoido,
I don't think you should take Leon's comment about entertaining contraptions as a negative. Gaming computer, roller coasters, TVs, race cars, Blue Angel jets are also entertaining contraptions.
My main complaint about the Parallax Forums is they are too much fun to read and they take time I should be using to program my Propellers.
Back on topic (sort of),
SparkFun had/has? a tutorial that attached wire to pins which were left floating and the input from the wires were used to generate random numbers which where then used to select messages displayed on a LCD to make an electronic "Magic 8 Ball."
Back off topic,
TinkersALot,
I've read several papers about "dowsing rods." Apparently they are very good a detecting spots the operator suspects as an item of interest. I'd be amazed if they could pass "double blind" type of study.
Duane
-Phil
Does that mean you're in limbo on this?
You know, a wise man once said that Limbotronics is thee wave of the future. Are you prepared to take that next big leap into the vast, scintillating ocean of wishy-washy?
-Phil
though, I don't remember if his name was heisenburg at the moment [har!]
-Phil
A test would be to have the rods attached to some remote device that moves over the pipes, with the human operator at a distance and stationary.
"Dowsing doesn't work under properly controlled conditions" is a broad statement with too few details and using "the scientific method" without careful, mutually agreed upon conditions involved is equally as useless as not.
There are (and have been) some very experienced researchers working in other areas of what's lumped under psychic research and they're very thoughtful about the difficulty of doing research in this area. Their general opinions is that there's something going on that has to do with non-local perceptions that doesn't fit what's considered "generally accepted scientific principles" by most other than some quantum physicists. It's hard to study because it often involves subjective phenomena and sometimes is supported by verifiable information that just falls outside of whatever study parameters are used, thus is discarded even though it's otherwise valid.
Generally, when studies in these areas are done, the results are prejudged. Often, if the studies are good ones and the results contradict "accepted dogma", the authors are savaged. This has happened many times in the history of science. A recent famous case involves research into causes of gastric ulcers where a researcher had the temerity to suggest that these might be caused by a previously unknown bacterium. He was villified in the literature and at conferences and became a pariah for years. Later he was proven absolutely correct.
I'm reminded of Dr. Russell Targ's published studies on clairvoyance treated as an information channel. He applied information theory methods to double blinded analyses of "remote viewing" information and concluded that, whatever communication channel is involved, the statistical properties of the information conveyed follow the same rules as with any very noisy information channel. That's a pretty minimal claim, based on good evidence. He made no claims about what channel was involved nor its physical principles, just that information was transferred and it had certain properties of density and reliability and that those properties were subjected to the same sort of analysis used for other noisy channels (like outer planet space probe downlinks).
When I was reading psychology at Birkbeck, Targ and Puthoff's favourite magician, Uri Geller, was invited to visit the physics department. The psychology department wanted to send a couple of observers, but Geller refused to turn up if any psychologists were present. Geller has details of his performance on his web site. James Randi has replicated some of his tricks live on TV.
is there a way to get more function out of less pins? Yes!
Search for Charlieplexing or GugaPlexing. Those make use of tristate capable pins in floating input mode and use a minimum amount of "overhead" hardware (some diodes and/or transistors).
Much more is possible with I2C/OneWire/SPI port expanders or almost endless shift registers at the cost of max. switching frequency.
Does a resistor network on a single output give a third state? No, as long as you can´t disconnect it from the pin during operation (would require another pin). Search for resistor (R/2R) ladder DACs.
For the "psychic" science: all pain is human (made), therefore it is difficult to get this factor out when humans make studies about human behavior or results of human behavior.
A friend of mine once said, medical studies are the most biased ones. I think this is because it is as hard or even harder to proof the opposite of a statement as it was to create that statement in a study. It is a science in a field that is far away from being understood, what remains is already empirically proven knowledge in an ever changing field.
wbr,
A1-SkyFx