Experience and specialist expertise
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Systems design
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Circuit design : analogue, digital, and power supply.
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Low power design
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FPGA firmware design and test in VHDL.
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Real time embedded software (C'/Assembler)
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PC utilities/ GUIs ('C'/'C++'/Java)
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System modelling/ simulation ('C', MATLAB, VHDL)
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Digital Signal Processing
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Cryptography
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PCB layout
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Third party peer review
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Board bring up
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Integration and test
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Design and test for EMC
Innovation at all levels
'Why is it like that?' is an attitude that fosters new approaches. It can operate at from the lowest level where say one resistor might do the job of two, up to the highest level where a wholly different underlying principle might give benefits. Patents are expensive to get and maintain, and many innovations happen in a low key way, out of sight and below the parapet of patent publication. Sometimes however a patent is justified.
These patents were team efforts, so I'm joint inventor : proximity sensor patents
....and here are two where it was just me, a relative position sensor, and a data transmission method.
Finally, for fun, this is a reference to a kind acknowledgement of some mechanical apparatus I was able to design and build for my friend, avant garde and extremely talented musician Chris Burn.
Experience across disciplines
How to decide what's best done in analogue hardware, FPGA, or microcontrollers?
Sound system design decisions require an understanding of the capabilities, strengths and vulnerabilities of the underlying candidate technologies.
Similarly, even when the focus moves to a lower level, understanding the technologies on the 'other side' of each interface will smooth later integration.
In both system and low level design work, I can draw on significantly wide experience of detailed real world design activity in multiple disciplines. Examples include software for real time embedded and PC hosts, VHDL entities for various complex functions , ultra low current analogue blocks and high power FET power switches.