Interview with Fergus Dixon

Featured Engineer

Fergus Dixon

Fergus Dixon - Chief Technical Officer, Electronic System Design

How did you get into electronics/ engineering and when did you start?

I did well in a maths competition, and a University lecturer suggested engineering. After finishing Electrical Engineering at Sydney University, I started as a service engineer and moved into design after several years.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Tektronix Oscilloscope, SMD well soldering tip, AVR ISP Mk2 programmer but most of all the Saleae Logic Analyzer is amazing for the size, cost and functionality.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

After doing a few years of assembler, using the Imagecraft C compiler is very pleasant. Delphi is excellent –just wish I knew more about it. My favourite software tool is Adobe Illustrator for designing lexan labels.

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

Without a doubt, reverse engineering projects offer the most challenges. A few years ago, a Biomedical Engineer had a faulty Medical Gas Panel whose manufacturer has gone bankrupt. It took a year and a half and half a dozen visits to the hospital but we managed to figure out how to reprogram the panel including the program algorithm. We have gone onto to fix up all the Medical Gas Panels in this hospital and four other major Sydney and Melbourne hospitals.

What is on your bookshelf?

Just finished reading iWoz which is a great read about Steve Wozniak. Biographies are very inspirational. Other books are “The Man behind the Microchip” about Intel’s Robert Noyce, “The New New Thing” about Netscape’s Jim Clark, “The Ideas Man” about Paul Allen, and of course “The Art of Electronics” by Horowitz and Hill. Other books are the Googlepedia, Software testing, National Seminconductor Analog Products databook, Texas Linear Circuits databook, and RS ^& Element-14 catalogues.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

For hardware troubleshooting, I always start at the source of the problem and trace back. Power supplies are a main source of issues, so making sure the DC supplies are accurate and stable is worth spending a few minutes on. Short and open circuits can always be seen, so doing a visual check on a board is a good first option.

With embedded firmware troubleshooting without an emulator, adding printf statements will usually pinpoint the problem quickly. Writing structured programs is recommended qwith comments, since prevention is always better than a cure.

Another trick is to ask or get the opinion of a colleague for a tricky problem. Also newgroups and forums are great places to get solutions. I figure that every problem has been fixed by someone else previously and it is just a matter of fidning them using Google.

What has been your favorite project?

Definitely the DNA analyzer project, mainly because it was fun watching the photomultiplier pick up the peaks when the bases reacted, but also because the project involved many sub circuits – stepper motor, accurate light amplifier, remote program, step up supply and solenoid driver.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

I went to wire in a 240V cable but didn’t notice that it was plugged in and turned on. The wires shorted on my wedding ring and my finger ended up mostly black before the safety switch tripped. Luckily I didn’t get a shock.

When we tested the first Dallas DS1820 one-wire digital temperature sensors, the datasheet said that the temperature reading was accurate to ±0.5°C but we measured a ±2°C difference. After sending the report to Dallas, the datasheet was changed to have a temperature accuracy of ±2°C.

What are you currently working on?

We are finishing a HIGS project – Hip Installation Guidance System which has worldwide patents, and an RF-based Energy saving device.

Can you sum up Electronic System Design in one sentence?

Electronic System Design is the art of designing powerful and reliable electronic systems. Oh, you mean our company – Electronic Systems Design is a company which offers the latest design technology at all levels from board design to firmware and computer programming.

How did this company come about?

The first company I started was called Stirling Rock International where the Stirling stood for Quality and Rock for Reliability, but after a while it didn’t sound so good. After reading up on Google SEO, the suggestion was to use a company name which was very similar to what the company did. Also Electronic System Design has the same initials as Electro Static Discharge.

In my last full-time job, I worked for a company which had been making (for over 10 years) panel meters housed in an aluminiun case. With static electricity, it was easy to get the microcontroller to reset by just touching the outside of the case. A small 0.1uF cap between the metal case and circuit ground was all that was required to fix this.

What are some of the things/designs we can expect to see from ESD in the near future?

We are currently looking at using Wi-Fi and RF and may develop some test boards for these. Everyone is talking about Arduino, and after using it I can see why. Sure Arduino is cheap – $30 for a Arduino Uno, but the main benefit is being able to implement powerful functions easily and quickly. Also, we have submitted an article to Circuit Cellar, and (fingers crossed) hope it get published this year.

What direction do you see your business heading in the next few years?

Hopefully more up than sideways. It would be great to be able to hire a few more people, but that depends on the workflow which seems to be always changing. While it seems like work has been quiet during the GFC, we have finished projects in the last two years which have used ethernet, bluetooth, lithium batteries, USB, RF, TFT and OLED displays, infared and this year we have probably completed around 50 new PCB designs.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

The main problem at the moment is innovation or lack of it. The China steamroller has taken over manufacturing, and the western world needs to step up the pace of innovation to stay ahead. Large companies should be spending a minimum of 10% of turnover on innovation to stay ahead of the pack. Innovation is the art of improving features, reducing cost, increasing reliability, speed, and ease of use.

What do you enjoy or aspire to most?

The main aim is to achieve success which can be either designing a best-selling product or designing a product which achieves performance better than other products. Several years ago, we designed an automatic pool chlorinator which ramped up to over 2000 devices a year at $5k each, with a very low failure rate.

What is the one attribute an engineer needs most?

Always test and prototype. Verify all information first, and make decisions based on this information. Always stay reasonable and keep your eyes and ears open. But the one thing an engineer needs most is a sense of humour. I have come across many different characters and bizarre decisions and the best way I found to deal with things which don’t make sense is to laugh them off and save the best stories up for a book later on. A customer asked us once to power a circuit with one connection only and took some convincing that this was not possible.

What is the one thing that annoys you most in engineering?

Engineers seem to have a low profile compared to doctors, lawyers, cooks, bankers and most other profession. When you look at what engineers do, they are at least equal to most other professionals and deserve a higher profile. I like Steve Wozniak’s motto – “Engineers first”.

Visit Fergus's EEWeb Profile

Previous Next

Previous Spotlights

Featured Products

PCB Tools

Passive Tools

RF Tools

Math

Extras