Alton B Otis

20020111570, Aug 15, 2002

May 28, 1999

09/242007

STANLEY CUTLER - VAN NUYS CA, US
GAYLE B. GERTH - DANA POINT CA, US
ALTON B. OTIS JR. - PORT TOWNSEND WA, US
TAYLOR CHAU - CERRITOS CA, US

A61H001/02
A61H001/00
A61H005/00

601/015000, 601/057000

A computer controlled massaging system () includes a pad (), a plurality of motorized vibrators () in respective regions () of the pad; a heater element () in the pad; microprocessor controller (); an array of input elements () responsive to operator input for signaling an intensity control value at least one region signal relating motors to be activated, and a heat control input; and a plurality of motor drivers () and a heater driver () responsive to the controller. The motors can be variably driven using pulse width modulation, with duty cycle compensation for voltage drops resulting from added loads and with current limiting when, for example, the system is powered from an AC line using a low voltage transformer of limited capacity. The system can have a power detector () for identifying sources of power having greater and lesser voltage drops as loads are added, the controller being programmed for increasing a base duty cycle and reducing a load increment duty cycle during operation from the power source of lesser voltage drop. A configuration selector () can signal particular components being electrically connected in the system for utilizing a single set of programmed instructions in the program memory in variously configured examples of the massaging system. The system can also include an audio detector () having an audio mode input element () for selectively activating the motors in response to a detected envelope of an external audio signal. The system can also include a test mode that automatically sequentially activates components of the system.

20020115946, Aug 22, 2002

Mar 25, 2002

10/107926

Stanley Cutler - Van Nuys CA, US
Gayle Gerth - Dana Point CA, US
Alton Otis - Port Townsend WA, US
Taylor Chau - Cerritos CA, US

A61H023/00

601/057000, 601/070000

A massaging system includes a pad, a heater element, motorized vibrators in the pad, heater and motor drivers in the pad, a control wand removably connectable to the pad and having a microcontroller with RAM and ROM, a serial EEPROM, and a serial interface to a shift register in the pad for signaling pulse width modulation of the drivers. The ROM defines a master set of operating modes and variations thereof in response to operator input. The EEPROM has data for implementing and configuring a subset of the master modes. Also disclosed is a set-up method for writing data to the EEPROM using the serial interface when the wand is disconnected from the pad. The system can include an audio envelope detector having a dual-slope integrating ADC in the pad that is cycled by serial signals driving the shift register, a single comparator output of the ADC signaling the microcontroller.

20020145512, Oct 10, 2002

Mar 5, 2002

10/092419

Charles Sleichter - Dana Point CA, US
Stanley Cutler - Van Nuys CA, US
Gayle Gerth - Dana Point CA, US
Alton Otis - Port Townsend WA, US
Taylor Chau - Cerritos CA, US

H04B003/36

340/407100, 340/425500, 340/438000

A vibro-tactile cutaneous alert stimulation and massaging system for equipment such as a vehicle includes a pad, a heater element, and motorized vibrators in respective regions of the pad; a plurality of vibratory transducers for location relative to plural zones of the seat; a microprocessor controller having program and variable memory and an input and output interface; an array of input elements connected to the input interface for signaling the microprocessor in response to operator input; and a driver circuit responsive to the output interface for producing the power signal separately for each of the transducers. The controller responds to the input elements to activate the transducers in: a massaging mode and an alert mode producing a predetermined sequence of vibro-tactile cutaneous alert stimulation cycles. Additional transducers can be spaced along a restraining seat belt for imparting directionally oriented stimuli warning of an impending collision.

20050130111, Jun 16, 2005

Oct 27, 2004

10/975712

Alton Otis - Port Townsend WA, US
Gary Paugh - Long Beach CA, US
James Whitney - San Juan Capistrano CA, US

G09B003/00

434322000

An electronic educational game comprising a learning aid that is adapted to receive and identify a lesson card, and to subsequently accept user input and provide responses to such inputs where the responses provided are at least partially determined by the identity of the lesson card, where such identity is determined by using an optical code reader that is part of the learning aid to read a plurality of optical code strips on the lesson card.

49358359, Jun 19, 1990

Nov 10, 1988

7/269779

Jimmy D. Godwin - San Jose CA
Roger O. Williams - Fremont CA
Stephen P. Williams - San Jose CA
Alton B. Otis - San Francisco CA

Insite Peripherals, Inc. - San Jose CA

G11B 582
G11B 556

360135

A magnetic medium including a physical reference feature for conveying positional information to a magnetic read/write head. The reference feature is made by indelibly marking a pattern on a surface of the medium such as by inscribing the metal oxide coating on the medium surface or by chemical etching or photolithography of the surface. Magnetic data is written on the surface of the medium and when data written on the reference feature is read, a modulated read back signal is observed which indicates the position of the reference feature. The position of the reference feature is used to direct the read/write head to track zero or to some other position on the medium surface. By using a second magnetic read/write head to write data on a second surface of the medium in response to the modulated readback signal, an electronic reference track can be written on the second surface for providing positional information to the second magnetic read/write head.

58779108, Mar 2, 1999

Jun 3, 1994

8/253618

Roger O. Williams - Fremont CA
Jimmy D. Godwin - San Jose CA
Stephen P. Williams - San Jose CA
Mark E. Strysko - San Jose CA
Alton B. Otis - San Francisco CA
Andrew M. Rose - Mountain View CA

Insite Peripherals, Inc. - Boulder CO

G11B 5596

360 66

A dual magnetic head having a first magnetic core for reading and writing very high track density floppy disks and a second magnetic core for reading and writing conventional track density floppy disks. Neither the first nor the second magnetic cores require the trim erase elements associated with prior art magnetic cores for use with floppy disks. When writing on conventional track density floppy disks, separation between data tracks is achieved by erasing a circular region on a first rotation of the floppy disk, erasing a second region, separated from the first region by a small gap, on a second rotation of the floppy disk, and writing data during a third rotation of the floppy disk centered about the small gap. With very high density floppy disks, data is written directly between optical servo tracks on the floppy disk without use of the two erase steps.

53632559, Nov 8, 1994

Mar 16, 1993

8/031955

Michael L. Ivers - San Jose CA
Andrew M. Rose - Mountain View CA
Alton B. Otis - San Francisco CA

Insite Peripherals, Inc. - San Jose CA

G11B 5596
G11B 1300

360 7703

A diskette comprising a jacket, a liner material disposed within said jacket, a flat circular media having a magnetic coating on both sides disposed within said liner material, a hub attached at the center of said media, a plurality of optical positioning tracks on at least one of said sides of said media, and a media type code optically embossed on at least one of said sides of said media. The media type code contains information about the physical properties of the particular diskette that will allow a disk drive unit to auto-configure itself to allow optimum data communication and performance.

55152120, May 7, 1996

Aug 25, 1993

8/111778

James Chiao - Saratoga CA
Jimmy D. Godwin - San Jose CA
Alton B. Otis - San Francisco CA
Andrew M. Rose - Mountain View CA
Roger O. Williams - Fremont CA
Stephen P. Williams - Morgan Hill CA
Mark E. Strysko - San Jose CA

Insite Peripherals, Inc. - San Jose CA

G11B 5596

360 7703

A diskette comprising a jacket, a liner material disposed within said jacket, a flat circular media having a magnetic coating on both sides disposed within said liner material, a hub attached at the center of said media, a plurality of servo grooves on at least one of said sides of said media that have stitched patterns that will alternate on-and-off at twenty kilohertz in the presence of a constant, unmodulated light source. The diskette is magnetically formatted with reference and data tracks recorded in such a way that extremely accurate position determinations can be made by looking at the analog amplitude of the detected tracks and comparing them at different head positions. The innermost tracks contain redundant copies of a disk mapping table that comprises data for a media type code, a sector size code, a sector interleave code, a total track count, a reassignment area starting address, a data area starting address, a total sector count, an update count, and a reassignment table having at least room for 250 entries of three bytes each.