Interview with Henrik Sandaker Palm

Featured Engineer

Henrik Sandaker Palm

Henrik Sandaker Palm - Electrical Engineer, Beijer Electronics

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

My first engineering experiences were as a kid. My father and I did several projects, including long range catapults, soap box cars and tree houses. I learned to use basic power tools, hand tools and measurement tools, and also took measurements and did simple calculations. I started programming as a teenager, but then I forgot all about engineering until my brother signed me up for a pre-course for engineering school when high school finished. I was clueless about what my future held, so I joined. I had previously done some electrical installations in cars as a part time business, like mounting wireless door unlocking modules and helped my brother program SAAB ECU’s, so I decided to take the electrical route.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

My panavise. Oscilloscopes, bench-top multimeters, power supply and soldering tools are essential, but you will not work comfortably unless you can fasten and rotate your circuit boards with ease. I tried several panavises before I found the perfect one.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

AVR Studio and MPLAB for programming microcontrollers. Many times I have wanted to try out other microcontroller products, but the software is often too bloated and the actual installation is a mess with several compilers too choose from and with limited documentation. Atmel and Microchip sets the perfect example on great software bundling for microcontrollers.

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

As I’ve just finished school some months ago, I haven’t had much industry experience yet. At work just recently, I was having a hard time configuring some external I/O modules for an industrial controller we sell. The protocol was CANopen, on which I am training myself to be the only person at work who knows, so there was little support. It was basically an issue where I used a combined network configurator and sniffer tool and had to use the sniffer part to detect an error on the configurator part of the tool. It turned out the accompanying software sent out an excessive amount of configuration data for each single configuration, which confused the nodes on the network.

What is on your bookshelf?

Except for all relevant product catalogs and all curriculum I’ve used at school, I haven’t collected much yet. There’s about two years worth of Make Magazine and Elektor. The last book I read was “Making things move” by Dustin Roberts, an interesting read for everyone getting into robotics or who is finding big or small mechanical movements interesting.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

Not much of a trick, but I can solder like I had four hands. The key is to find four fingers at each hand you can combine into two grippers, and voila, you can now hold circuit board and the wire to be soldered while holding the soldering iron and feeding solder at the same time. Most of my circuit analysis trick are pretty dirty, and is only to be used on personal projects at home. Like tickling the power rails on a newly soldered PCB with the power supply leads, to see if the supply current rockets to indicate a short.

What has been your favorite project?

As many people say, the one I’m currently working on. But if you hit a bump and decides to put it aside, then it suddenly becomes your least favorite project, ever. Right now I’m working on interfacing an old cell phone to a microcontroller using standard AT commands over serial communication. What I love about this project is how I can re-purpose old electronics to be used instead of buying expensive modules from hobbyist stores. Another thing is the range of the wireless link on the GSM/GPRS band, it’s pretty much only limited to cell phone coverage areas around the globe!

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

During engineering school, I was fixing the thermostat for the bathroom under-floor heating in my apartment. My girlfriend was making dinner and I was really hungry so I’ve decided not to pull the circuit breaker this time, he he. I got shocked, and the current exited my leg which was touching some metal shoe organizers. The skin melted at the exit point of my leg! I was recommended a trip to the emergency room for a check-up, and they kept me for 12 hours with ECG. Since then I either pull the circuit breaker or work on voltages lower than 5 volts.

What are you currently working on?

Besides the GSM and CANopen project, I am doing a really simple stepper motor analog clock circuit for a friend. First part is making a 32.768 square wave to feed a microcontroller, then divide it several times and output pulses to make a stepper motor turn 360 degrees in an hour. I do these sort of projects cheaply for others to gain some experience myself. This was my first time building an analog watch crystal oscillator using a 555 timer, and certainly I will have use for this later.

How did microHobby.net come about?

It came about as a blog to document and share my spare time projects. I got the idea early when getting into electronics as a hobby, so I’m glad I got to document some of the first projects. It’s more of a site to share and educate, than a conventional blog with an electronics theme. My goal is to post circuits and solutions to problems which I didn’t find for myself when starting the projects, so others can benefit from my work. The most important thing about being a part of the electronics hobbyist community is to share your knowledge for others to find and use to further develop their projects.

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

Speaking from my controls engineer point of view, I see more computers, more intelligent panels and intelligent sharing of data between devices like PLC’s, cell phones, servers and of course computers. I hope to see more wireless links which would lead to significantly lower costs and time consumed wiring hardware. Also things are getting more graphical and massively cheaper. Industrial controllers have decreased in price by tenths over the last few years.

Regarding electronics as a hobbyist, I am very glad to see Maker Faire expanding, arduinos being sold at Radio Shack and a growing industry based on open source hardware. At these times it feels frustrating being situated in Norway, but I will do my best to contribute and bring the maker movement over here.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

In the controls department, I think sooner or later it will be hard making money for sales businesses while prices drop on industrial hardware. This will not only lead to lower profits on sales, but the entry ticket into automation being so much cheaper will lead to manufacturers developing more on their own, educating their own engineers to do the tasks they used to source from specialist companies.

On higher level electronics though, I think they’re heading in the right direction. Devices are consuming less power, getting more user friendly and more available for anyone who’d like to join.

You can find me on Twiiter here.

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