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Thinking Allowed PICking
on Technology Jon
Thompson is a freelance writer by day and performer by night. He's the
author of The Stripper Deck, Poker Faced, and Naked
Mentalism, all published by lulu.com.
As a child, my grandfather and I spent hours messing about with transistors, resistors, batteries and the rest, making circuits that went “beep”, amplified faint radio signals, and so on. At school, I did physics and learnt the laws and equations governing circuits, passed my exams, but then simply shelved all that knowledge. The reason was I also studied computer science. I found the way a simple bunch of components come together to form a circuit that accepts instructions and makes simple decisions utterly fascinating. I still do. Then, about a year ago, I had an idea for a timing device that would allow a performer to know when something was about to happen. I spent an afternoon happily reading the Maplin online electronics component catalogue and soon discovered that things have moved on significantly in the last two decades. It was nothing short of waking up in the world of tomorrow. What I’d like to draw your attention to in particular is something called a PIC microcontroller chip, the smallest of which currently in production costs around £1.50 (about $3), but is in fact a fully programmable 8-bit microprocessor with its own modest onboard storage for a program and working data. At just a centimetre in length, with just eight protruding pins, and designed specifically for embedded control applications, can you see where I’m going with this? The models soon ramp up in their capabilities, but not necessarily in price. Take the PIC12F683 for example. If I’ve read the datasheet correctly, it has 3.5Kb of flash RAM fro programs, a further 128 bytes of data RAM, and a further 256 bytes for storing reference data. It also has an onboard, programmable, real-time timer. It runs at an astonishing 4MHz, at which speed it consumes just 220 micro-amps. It can also go into a standby mode in which it sips just 50 nano-amps of current. PIC chips can read data arriving on certain of their pins in real-time, decide what to do about it according to the onboard program and output signals on other pins that can drive a power stage to switch larger amounts of current for relays, etc. Full programming environments including hardware that plugs into a PC make programming these chips easy, as do a plethora of books available from Amazon and other outlets. What’s more, programming a PIC chip in its own native language makes the tiny amount of RAM available seem positively huge – just like the old days when computers were computers, not bloated playthings that require a gigabyte of RAM just to hoist some overblown operating system into existence (grrr...). The question is, what can you do with PIC chips in mentalism? Here’s an idea that occurred to me after running a séance one recent Friday evening. Imagine a new kind of ouija board. It has the usual markings, but it’s also capable of taking a spike screwed into the middle of the board. On this would sit a finely balanced metal indicator needle, acting as a planchette, and with the same freedom to rotate as that of a compass needle. Over the top of this would sit a glass bell jar, ensuring that the needle is free from all external interference. After using the board in the usual way with a normal planchette, the spike, indicator needle and bell jar are put in place. Someone asks a question. The needle moves lazily, eventually pointing to yes, no, and maybe other areas of the board. The sky’s the limit. Imagine a normal planchette with a magnet in the tip and detectors under the letters feeding a more sophisticated PIC chip with real-time data. What could it do with that knowledge? Or, what about a ceremonial alter chalice with a tiny recess in the base of the bowl into which you pack a tiny pyro, made from the head of a match or some rolled-up flash paper. You place a peeked billet into the cup and begin to concentrate, or perhaps call upon the Gods for an answer. A few seconds later, the billet bursts into sulphurous flame! Top
of the PIC range are new 32-bit chips running at 80MHz. The most advanced
model has 0.5Gb of Flash RAM in total. Planned models will include a
USB interface, and yet, if you’ve ever had the back off a mobile
phone, they’re about the same size as the big chips they contain.
. With those kinds of capabilities available, the mere “stooging”
of props seems somewhat primitive. There’s enough capability here
to impart a serious level of independent intelligence to your spookiest
props. The spectators’ psychology will do the rest.
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