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PRODUCTS DOCUMENTATION TELEO USER GUIDE	General Overview Introduction to Teleo Products:   General Overview About The Documentation

Teleo™ is a modular set of components used for building kinetic and interactive systems, devices or machines. Teleo spans mechanical hardware, through microcontroller boards, all the way to software libraries and applications. Users can select as much or as little from our product range as they need for their individual development needs.

Teleo is easily accessible to beginners, and is essential to experts working with this technology. With Teleo's modular, expandable components, users from various backgrounds and with different skill sets can easily find a comfortable starting point from which to grow and expand their skills as they learn more.

HOW YOU CAN USE TELEO
The Teleo user identifies key functional areas in their projects. For example, sensing events in the environment like the linear position of an object, or monitoring temperature, or controlling a motor or a light.

modular functionality
A number of microprocessor-based modules are available to serve these commonly needed functions. Each of these Teleo Modules performs one or more functions such as motor and lighting control, sensor conditioning, and acquisition and interfacing with other devices. We are continually adding to the set of modules we have available as we develop them.
When several modules are required for a single project up to 63 can be connected together using a simple four-wire network cable. A development kit will soon be available for people familiar with electronics and microprocessor programming to create their own modules.

peer to peer network
Built into each module is a simple, low-cost, reliable network interface permitting the rapid integration of dissimilar devices in systems of arbitrary complexity. One type of module, the Translator, permits a computer running the Teleo Application SDK or other customer-built application to communicate with all networked modules. In addition, each module can be configured to communicate with any other module, permitting fully stand-alone operation.

layered software
Our simple and easy to use application level software, the Teleo Application SDK , runs on a number of different platforms and provides configuration, monitoring and control capabilites over the rest of the system.

compatible mechanisms
To facilitate the sometimes difficult job of working out how to make things move, we provide mechanisms at a variety of scales. For example, the TeleoRotator, includes a DC motor, a position sensor and a motor control module to process the sensor input and drive the motor. A customer without specialized training and equipment can take one or more of these mechanisms and create a robot platform, a rotating product display, or other kinetic system. At the very lowest level, we offer a range of accessories including nuts, bolts, shafts, gears, chain, etc. in a number of different scales specifically chosen to integrate with each other.

The idea of this guide is to provide useful information to Teleo users. Since our product is designed to be used by a very wide variety of people - from the week-end hobbyist thinking about interfacing to electronics for the first time to hard core engineers who are looking for a way to cut down time and money spent in project development there is the inevitable problem of appropriate tone and vocabulary. We ask that you be patient. There will be people who think there is too much technical information supplied here and others who find the treatment too light.

For those who find it too technical we have tried to summarize important points so that even if your eyes glaze over and you get flashbacks to unpleasant high school situations when you read some of this, you can still be confident that you're getting the big picture.

Throughout this guide, frequent reference is made to basic electrical and electronic terms. If you are not clear over the meanings of terms like voltage, current, resistance, the Basic Electronics appendix is there to provide you with support. You can probably just squeak-by if you don't learn at least a little electronics-talk, but we think it's a great idea to get just the basics.

When you feel that you need more electronics information beyond what we supply in the Appendix, we recommend a couple of different paths, depending on your skills and interest. If you are mostly interested in getting a very gentle basic introduction to electronics, the Engineer's Notebook series of Forrest Mims (available from RadioShack) is a great start. He covers basic concepts by showing very basic circuits. In addition, your local bookstore will almost certainly have a selection of introductory electronics books. If you are more interested in getting a comprehensive grounding in electronics, it's very hard to surpass "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill published by Cambridge Press. This book will take you from the basics all the way to wireless and microprocessors.

For those who find less technical meat here than you're used to in a user guide for a fairly technical system, we urge you to relax, enjoy the pretty pictures and get a rough overview of Teleo. We will provide more technical information for you in other documents and via other means.