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Product Design and Manufacturing

 
Consulting

Before starting any job it's important to hammer out a specification for what is expected.  Communication skills are an essential part of this process because many clients don't have the detailed technical understanding of what it takes to convert that napkin drawing into a real product. Flexability is another requirement! Without exception, every design I've started has had more than one mid-course correction, most often from the clients themselves.

A consultant must also keep up on the ever changing tecnologies of the day! But, there is so much to know, it's best to focus ones skills. I now intend to take my knowledge and experience of Microchip PIC® MCU controllers and expand into the rapidly growing Android market. The need for Android to external embedded controller functionality is very high, with many large corporations getting involved. As part of that effort I am prototyping an embedded controller with Bluetooth and jumping into Android programming. I've found some unique programming tools from Anywhere Software (Awesome software: Imagine being able to create an App for your smartphone with no prior knowledge of the Android OS, or JAVA for that matter within one day). Tools like these are critical to today's fast turn-around environment. Also, due to my interest in blind and vision impaired accessability I am also researching how blind accessability to the Android platform might be achieved with simple touch screen gestures and TTS voice response.

I looking forward to talking with my next prospective client, and I hope to add your project here soon!

PIC® is a registered trademark of Microchip Technology, Inc.

MAJOR PROJECTS AND CLIENTS


BRIDGEPAD:  An automated scoring device and system for use in Bridge Tournaments.  (2008 - 2009)

BridgePad Previously, Bridge Tournaments were scored by hand, by the players, and by scoring "runners" that would pick up the paper scores and bring them to the tournament director for tabulation. Error prone and labor intensive, a new method was needed!

Originally projected to be a 4 to 5 month project by the client, but all of us involved found that there was a lot more to the game of bridge than we ever imagined.  Important lesson: few if any projects we start are simple!  This took over 10,000 lines of code to implement.  Internally this is a simple device: an LCD display, a 3.3 volt power supply, an RF transceiver from Radiotronix and a PIC18F4620.  The device allows the bridge player to enter his "bid", which is checked for validity, then transmitted to a PC host with proprietary RF packets allowing more than 400 units to operate simultaneously in a Bridge Tournament.  Battery life is more than 6 months.  Also has a built in RF bootloader, allowing field upgrades.

 

Brooks Technology,  Killeen, TX, 76542
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