To see my resume, go here.

Projects ... I work on tons of them. I love my job and think that it is the best in the world (for me), other than the pay and beauracracy of working for the state.

Keep in mind I am clueless about the underlying research these groups are doing. I just ask them what they need, clarify until it makes sense, let my boss translate from research speak (He has a PHD in Chemistry) to Electical Engineer speak, and then I make whatever they need. This does not mean I have a clue about the research :).

I also work on hundreds of tiny projects from figuring out how to make this exotic cable, to how to get that bottle onto the probe right, to "make me a cable this long with this type connectors", to ordering parts people need, to assembling projects people have designed, to fixing bad solder connections, to repairing this broken homemade project, to consulting with people who need advice, to helping the software guy understand stuff, to building lots of little microprocessor projects, to .... well, you get the idea. I do a TON of stuff that isn't really an official project.

I will be adding projects when I remember them and as I get pictures of each project I will also put them up. Anyhow ... let's start some of the bigger projects ...

My first project at the IDL also turned into my nightmare project. This was for the Carey Johnson group, most specifically for this project (I think). It involved mechanical systems, control loops, analog filters, you name it and I had not done it :). But I am adaptable and I made do. I didn't really have the option to quit so I had to make it work. I'll spare you the gory details but this project took about 6 months of hard work to make it work. It went through the machine shop so many times it really isn't the same one we started with :). Well, I think the mounting base is the original ... but then we did make mods to it as well ... never mind :)

The purpose of this project is to spin an optic at a fixed rate. A laser beam is passed through the optic which creates a rotating polarized light that is used to test for the meaning of life or something. Actually this research project is looking for the "master key" of proteins so that it can discover all sorts of cures, etc.. The major problem here is the speed needs to be settable by the researcher and the motor must hold this speed constant even though the temperatures change, the resistances change, in fact everything changes. So the control loop must be able to compensate (but I don't know much about control loops!).

Eventually I managed to get it to work to requested specifications and accepted by the project sponsors. Alas, they never could get good data out of it. They were not willing to change their data aquistion to use the rotational encoding signals I gave them and they couldn't match the data gathered to the speed set ... so it was a wash. They need much tighther specs than they gave and this requires a whole different approach. But since we took so long to get them this project they haven't been coming around for help on the next one. Oh well.

One of the projects I had to build next was a 30,000 volt power supply for the Larive Group. This was fun! We bought the main power supply that put out the 30,000 volts, but I still had to power and package it as well as design the display systems that measured the voltage & currents. On top of everything else, do you know how hard it is to insulate 30,000V ???? But I got it and it worked well and the people at the NMR lab at KU are quite pleased with it and still use it constantly.

We were asked by the BioBehavioral Measurement Core unit to design a new keyboard for a Palm. This keyboard was used in data collection while observing animals & people under test. It was intended to fit into the hands of the researcher and has one button per finger with a couple extra buttons for the thumb. Basically it involved designing a keyboard with a small processor to scan the buttons being pushed and report them to the Palm that was plugged into the keyboard.

Well, I did not design the originals, but I designed the new version of this existing project. I added an active ability to read back the output voltage and output current. The original worked in an "open loop" format where it was set to a voltage and hopefully it was close. The various research groups who used these devices requested a current feedback so they could tell when the experiment was drawing current (an indicator that the electrophoresis process is working).

This project took a long time (months) and made me truly understand the value of documentation. I was handed a schematic of the old board and a semi-idea of what they wanted and was asked to make the new board. HUH?.

I guess I should back up a little. This project is for the Dzero project of the Fermi National Accelerator Labratory, specifically for the Silicon Tracker group. These people smash particles into each other at very high energy levels and use very complicated sensors to look for subatomic partiles ... you know, particle physics.

So as part of one of these sensors, they use a very complicated custom chip called the SVX chip. This is a fancy 128 channel analog to digital converter. The current project being run now used the Revision 2E of this chip. The CDF experiment at FNAL uses the Revision 3 of the chip. They designed the Revision 4 of the chip for the new DZero detector being designed now that will replace the detector that is in operation right now (2002).

To test this chip, they have some fancy machines which simulate the system it operates in and can download test information and readout all sorts of stuff. With this machine, they can test all sorts of modes, timing, and functions on this custom chip, the SVX4.

This chip needs some form of interface to the custom machinery and hence then my board. It was an adapter board. The problem is that the big fancy machinery was limited in the number of outputs, so they were multiplexed and thus my board has to take the multiplexed information and demultiplex. When the chips were read out, the information needed buffering, so I put down big buffers. The chip needed stable power, so I put down power regulators.

Seems easy enough, until you realize how little documentation I had to start with. Then add in that the schematic did not match the existing board (for SVX3), and I couldn't get ahold of the original board. Then add in that the labels didn't match from the schematic to the board. Then none of those matched the source code inside the de-multiplexor chip. Then the programming labels had all changed. Then they cut the board making changes but did not update the schematic ... or more importantly they only updated SOME of the schematic. It was very tough to reverse engineer the system.

But, I got it done and as of this writing (July 15, 2002) they are sucessful and working on testing the SVX4 chip with it. Oh, they have issues such as the special machinery ran out of memory so they can't test it well, etc... In all it was an interesting project and I intend to finish that documentation. In the mean time if your really a geek, here is the current documentation.

These professors are working on projects that share a lot of similar equipment. Typically it will involve battery boxes, battery chargers, low noise amplifiers, isolation amplifiers, some triggering circuits, you name it. Typically in metal boxes (for shielding) with shielded military style connectors and shielded signal cables. They work with super duper little signal and need very high quality circuits. These are fun, even if I tend to be handed the design and told to build them. It's OK, I don't have to design everything :).

In addition, at least for a while, I was doing a lot of research for Dr. Han into how to make this or that ... how to get this many parts into this ultra tiny space, etc... but since I didn't finish the last one he gave me there haven't been any more, which is OK since I am still behind. The project was how to test a chip at 0.007 degrees Kelvin (i.e. pretty much absolute zero). It was a complicated set of requirements and I didn't have the time to do this for him and it is not part of our work unless we are bored.

This project is to go into the south pole for the RICE Project. The super short version is that they are looking for high energy neutrinos that smack into the polar ice cap. The problem is that typically the data they want is pretty rare and it being drowned out by surface generated noise.

Guess I should back up again. The way they look for these events is by burying a large array of antennas in the ice. These antennas make up a 3 dimensional array. By correlating when the signals hit each antenna and the known geometry of the array they can build a model of which direction the wave was travelling and what the pattern of the energy wave was. Neutrinos have a characteristic wave pattern that they are looking for. Unfortunately no electronics are quiet and thus there are several sources of noise that travel through the array periodically and basically swamp the main electronics system. They basically have no "live" time with the system due to these noise sources. Since the decisions have to be made on the order of 200ns, there is no way to do that in software no matter how fast a processor you have (even a 2.5GHz processor just couldn't do it written in assembly language ... well, it would be close at 500 instructions total).

Anyhow, so I designed a board that can figure out the order of arrival of signals and process them to 4 different veto patterns. If the signal matches one of the 4 known patterns of surface noise, I prevent it from triggering the main system.

So, in hardware, I veto surface patterns. This is also a very complicated system that I often questioned if it was possible to make it work by myself (simply a time issue since it could be a very big project and I don't have the resources to do very big projects).

Professor Judy Wu asked for an interesting little box. This box is needed to speed up some measurements they are making that they currently do by hand and is quite a labor intensive problem.

They are using a scanner connected to some of their custom chips under experiment. They scan across the chips surface and the output is a signal from 0 to -0.03V. I need to output the scan control signal (selectable between 0.1ms, 1ms, 10ms, 100ms, and 1 second) and then look for the minimum or maximum value (selectable). When the min or max value is found, save that value and when it happened in the period. Output these values as 0-10V signals. For time, 0V = beginning of period and 10V = end of period. The middle value of time would be 5V. For the value -30mV = 10V out and 0V in = 0V out.

So, I had to design the board from scratch. Since we needed to process samples at 2MHz (for the 0.1ms period), we did not have a processor fast enough to do the data processing ... so I did it in hardware again :). I designed an FPGA that generated the right periods, clocked in the A/D data, processed it storing values and time and then outputing the correct values to D/A converters. Since the input signals are so small, I have batteries and a battery charger built in. For convenience sake, I also designed in a "stoplight" controller for the batteries. Red = Stop and recharge, Yellow = Batteries charging, Green = Done recharging.

I like it.

And for the super geeks: