Product that I have either lead/managed the design of or participated on the design team. This is only a small sample of all the products and projects worked on, some product photo’s are lost and some products never went to market and are still confidential property of that company.
Consumer Electronics Products
Here is a working prototype design from the development system shown below. This prototype become the Flip Ultra camera.
This ugly beast is an in-house designed development board for the next generation Flip video camera using the Zoran Coach 10 processor. Note all the blue wires to fix the parts of the system that did not work as stated in the datasheets.
Pure Digital Technologies “Mino” video camcorder. The world’s easiest to use camcorder. I joined Pure Digital halfway through the development of this product and worked with a skeleton engineering team to support completion of development and mass production.
This is a picture of me standing next to the prototypes of a famous game console prior to its release. My team at Transmeta did work for this company under contract to them. Our contract prevents me from showing the product so the image was retouched.
This is the FlexGo PC designed by my group at Transmeta under contract for Microsoft. This system was designed for subsidized emerging markets and special engineering effort went into designing the system to prevent hacking or scrapping of materials. The PCB used blind and buried via’s hide critical signals inside the PCB. We wrote a very detailed research report for Microsoft on hack prevention for PC’s. This system was a 1.1GHz Windows PC with DVD, 40GB HDD and 512M of memory. The whole system was able to operate off a 12V battery as shown in this photo.
Transmeta Mini-ITX reference design. This is the equivalent of a standard “Windows” desktop computer in about the same space as a paperback novel. This board took approximately 6 man years to develop and accomplished something that no other company was able to do with this much computing power in this small a space. The board is only 4 layers and has a 1.7GHz CPU, 3D graphics processor and DDR400 memory interface. The whole system consumes approximately 20 watts (including hard drive and CD ROM!). This is the Windows equivalent of a Mac Mini and was completed several months prior to the release of the Mac Mini.
Portalplayer 6005 Development System. This is a development system for Portalplayer’s custom dual ARM ASIC that is used for portable MP3 audio products. All the peripherals were built on plug-in modules to facilitate ease of development for new types of interfaces. The module on the top right has a 10GB hard drive mounted on the under side of the board. There is a USB 2.0 module not shown in this photo.
Portalplayer 6012B MP3 Audio Player Reference Design. This was a reference design for a hard disc based portable audio device. This was the humble beginnings of what eventually became the Apple iPod
Portalplayer/Apple iPod MP3 Audio Player. This product was designed around the Portalplayer 5002 ASIC and a Texas Instruments 1394 controller. Apple did a considerable amount of engineering, we were mostly in the dark as to what they were doing. It often made the collaborative engineering process difficult since we did not know what the end product was.
3Com “Tank” residential gateway and home media server with 802.11b (bottom view). This was to be a all inclusive broadband gateway and server for the residential market. The product was to use an internally developed ASIC based around an ARM 9 CPU and peripheral interfaces developed by the 3Com ASIC group. The first prototype hardware had a National Semiconductor Cygnus SOC CPU and lots of other discrete chips to simulate the target product. Tank firmware started on the QNX operating system and later moved to Linux from Monta Vista. The project was never completed since 3Com closed down the entire division.
Philips ITV410 set top box supporting Windows CE and web browsing for the European market with SCART, PIP, etc. The IC with the green tape was a prototype of a Toshiba MIPS R5000 class CPU. The CPU and the ASIC in the center were being integrated into a single ASIC.
This was a custom ASIC being developed by Toshiba, Philips and Microsoft. It was to be a complete set top box controller with an integrated MIPS R5000 CPU and video DAC’s that runs Windows CE. My group worked on the specification development. This project was an extension of a previous graphics controller ASIC that we were building upon. This ASIC was to be used in all WebTV products as well as the European set top boxes like the one shown above.
Philips WebTV MAT976. This was a new and improved version of an older Philips WebTV box. We designed out the hard drive replacing it with flash memory, went to a faster MIPS CPU, replaced the Rockwell modem with a soft modem and did additional cost reductions.
Philips WebTV MAT965. This was the highest volume product in the WebTV family shipping more than 60,000 pieces a month. We did significant efforts to improve the product perform, reduce BOM cost and improve reliability.
Philips Tivo HDR112 with 15GB storage. Manufactured and supported by our team in Sunnyvale, almost all the hardware/firmware was done exclusively by Tivo with some input from the Philips engineering group.
Philips DirecTV Satellite Receiver. Done as a joint development project between Philips and Dr.Design. Philips produces several million satellite receiver boxes a year.
Stanley infrared motion sensor element for home lock system, finished product shown on
right. Joint development project between Diablo Research and Siemens Optoelectronics. Designed used semi-custom analog ASIC, PIC microcontroller die, IR LED, IR transistor and some assorted passive components mounted to a single lead frame. This product shipped approx 250,000 pieces a month for its short 9 month product life.
This is a home thermostat project I did at Diablo Research for Rheem. The thermostat had a micro inside connected to a simple three wire network with remote thermal sensors. The thermostat would then perform variable control over the furnace to optimize energy efficiency. This project was a mechanical engineering nightmare, if you buy me a beer I will tell you all the ugly details. The thermostat is shown on the left with the cover removed and on the right with the cover. The whole front panel was backlit for night
viewing.
Aragon high-end remote controlled audio preamp. Design based on Philips 80C751 micro. Great pains were undertaken to ensure that the analog audio path was not corrupted by the digital control. This design was featured in the Philips “Dream Design” contest book.
Numark DJ mixer with digital sampler. Designed in collaboration with Galien Technologies, S-Systems and Ashcan Engineering. Design based around an
Analog Devices DSP for doing digital sampling, scratching and time compression.
This is the DSP board that went into the Numark DJ mixer shown above
Orchid Technology Soundwave 32. This was the first PC Sound card that used wave table synthesis. The design was based around an Analog Devices ADSP-2101 DSP processor and a general midi sample set from Envision Interactive.
Orchid Technology “WaveBooster” general midi compatible wave table synthesis plug-in module for sound cards. The design was based around the “DREAM” wave table synthesis engine and DREAM sample set. DREAM was later purchased by Crystal Semiconductor.
Alphasonik MOSFET high current class AB automotive amplifiers. Power outputs range from 50 to 300 watts per channel. The power supply was more challenging to design than the amp.
Audioaccess “MRX” 6 zone muti-room stereo system with 12 channel power amplifier, cross point audio switching, AM/FM tuner and RS485 control network that connected to the keypads below. This was a true start-up project with myself and one other engineer working 7 days a week for a year to complete this. The front panel was injection molded plastic. The window housed a LCD graphics display. This project was a labor of love for me and won a design award from the electronics industry association.
This is the 12 x 40 watt amplifier that went into the Audioaccess MRX. The amplifier was designed from the ground up, the heat was custom designed to require no secondary operations. the power transistors are under the silver clips behind the white emitter resistors. The power transistor clips snapped on and off the heatsink significantly simplifying the alignment and mounting process.
Audioaccess KPS Keypad, more than 10 years old and still in production! This keypad is actually a minature RS485 terminal.
Audioaccess PX6 remote controlled preamp. One of the first remote controlled preamps to have high-end audio performance specs. Design based around the Motorola 68HC05 micro and Analog Devices MDAC. This was another true startup project which I had to do alone, from schematic design to chassis design and certifications.
Commercial Products
A PCI/ISA motherboard based on the Motorola 68000 “QUICC” CPU, Tundra Northbridge and Winbond Southbridge. This board was the router section of a satellite communications system design by Diablo Research under contract with General Electric. The board ran the PSOS operating system and supported the full plug’n'play spec on the ISA and PCI buses.
World renowned Apogee/Krell “Grand” reference speaker systems. Developed a RS422 network to connect the two speakers and two electronics stacks that controlled the crossover and pre-amp electronics. There were four 8051 micro controllers that made up the system and more than 10,000 line of assembly code.
Timeline MicroLynx control keyboard for television broadcast
Timeline Lynx2 SMPTE time code to Ampex VPR3 machine controller for the television and recoding industry.
Timeline KCU, keyboard control unit. One of the first automated products for controlling film, video and audio machines for complex editing and ADR.
Sony PCM3324, the grandfather of DASH multi-track tape based digital recoding. This monster weighed in at more than 400 pounds and at one time was in use by almost every recoding studio in the world. I worked in the field engineering group responsible for supporting these products. At the time these were hand made and much of the product documentation was copies of lab notebooks.
Lexicon PCM60 (photo is actually a PCM80 since I can’t find the PCM60 photo) This was the first product to use the Lexicon signal processor ASIC which was the precursor to a DSP processor.
Lexicon PCM42, a genius product conceived and design by Gary Hall of Lexicon. Worked as a technician on the project team while I was in college. The PCM42 featured the Intel 8048 micro for some really sophisticated capabilities (for the time of course!).
Lexicon PCM41, another genius product conceived and design by Gary Hall of Lexicon. Worked as a technician on the project team while I was in college.
Lexicon 224XL shown with LARC remote control, the LARC lived on for many years as a remote control for all sorts of Lexicon products.
Automation Products
CPU emulation system. This board although looks small in this photo is about the size of a desktop. This board connects via several multi hundred pin connectors to an “IKOS” emulation system and is used to emulate in system operation of a Windows computer. All the peripherals had to be designed to operate at fractional speed to work with the IKOS system. This board took approximately 4 man years to develop and required the assistance of one of silicon valley’s leading emulation experts. Here is a photo of the board in action, note the IKOS emulator (red box).
Thermal design power measurement system. The is a sample display screen from a data acquisition system built around Labview. This system performs a measurement and analysis that previously took a technician half a day in 3 minutes. The system performs some very complex power analysis of Transmeta’s CPU under different types of load conditions and using statistical analysis determines the “TDP” number.
This is a “validation” board for a CPU chip made by Transmeta. The board is used to prove the functionality of the chip in a real world PC like design. In addition to being a PC motherboard, this board permits connection of several different types of test boxes and logic analyzers. There are 7 different power supplies on this board all with power measurement capabilities. The board also permits use of a custom made socket for the CPU. This board is the result of approximately 5 engineer’s effort. several hundred of these types of boards were produced for in-house testing and development.
Facilities
Minot Sound Studios, NY. Installation of Harrison 56×48 recording console
PTW Productions, NY. Sony 28×24 control room
Telarc Records, Ohio. Sony all digital production studio
PBS, NYC. Audio follow video production automation
Green Technology Products
This is the front and back view of an LED light engine I developed at OptoElectronix for use in residential lighting. This unit produces approximately 1,500 lumens of light which is very bright. Inside the housing is a 120V triac dimmer compatible switching power supply and thermal control circuitry with close to 85% efficiency, all developed in-house. This project not only was challenging in electrical design but the mechanical and thermal design was even more difficult. the housing is die cast aluminum. We had to come up with a thermal design that was optimized for natural convection air flow and manufacturable in high volume. The design was done in Solidworks and we used CFDesign to do the thermal modeling. After iterating through the fin design and spacing we had what we thought was a solid solution. Then, at the last minute the mold maker came back with a big change which totally screwed up the laminar flow of the fins. We came up with a compromised design which is what you see in this picture. The product in the photo was from production tooling. If I had to do it again I would have probably used a forging process instead of die cast, with a parting line in the horizontal center.
This is an LED light engine developed at OptoElectronix. The picture on the right shows it lit up. What you can’t see is that it produces 1,000 lumens of light which is very bright. Inside the housing is a 120V switching power supply and control circuitry for triac compatible dimming all developed in-house. The design used an custom designed extruded housing for natural convection cooling and a “BBB” buck regulator that was triac dimmer friendly. The BBB buck was a tricky design to work with, since this was designed there are some nicer non-isolated flyback controllers, we used one in the previous device.