Interview with Jeremy Blum

Featured Engineer

Jeremy Blum

Jeremy Blum - Electrical Engineering Student at Cornell University, Open-Source Maker and Hacker

image: me presenting about engineering at Ignite Ithaca 2010

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

It was obvious from a young age that I was destined for engineering. As with most engineers I know, my obsession with creating things started with blocks and Legos, then quickly transitioned to robots and computer. Before I focused myself on electrical engineering and open source hardware development, I spent many years building computers and producing instructional videos that would help people to build their own machines. By high school, computer building was old-hat and I wanted something more challenging, so I tried my hand at microcontrollers, robotics, programming, and circuit design.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

There are three hardware tools that I cannot live without: A good soldering station, a dremel, and duct tape (does that count?). I have yet to encounter a problem that cannot be solved by a combination of these tools.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

I’m a bit of an arduino nerd, so the arduino IDE is indispensable to me. But I’m also a fan of eagleCAD, Fritzing, AVR studio, and the all important matlab! Oh, and I LOVE processing for making simple graphical readouts from my various hardware projects (Here’s an example).

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

By EE standards, this bug really isn’t tricky at all, but it was one of the first major roadblocks I ever hit working on a circuit, way back in 11th grade. I was doing prosthetics research, which involved me taking readings from myoelectrodes (they pick up on the electric impulses that tell your muscles to contract). Due to the extreme amounts of amplification necessary to read signals from surface-myoelectric sensors, it was critical that there be as little external noise introduced into the circuit as possible. I took all the proper steps regarding grounding, etc, but I my signal way still being drastically overpowered by noise. After a full eight hours of racking my brain, I realized that the noise was at about 60Hz – it was was coming from my laptop’s switching DC power supply. Sure enough – running on battery power resulted in crystal-clear data acquisition. This was long before I took any electrical engineering courses, or before I had any highly developed understanding of analog circuits – so I was pretty excited when I finally figured it out.

What is on your bookshelf?

My bookshelf has two things: electronics and (a few) books. The majority of my engineering knowledge has been garnered from blogs, forums, mailing lists, and tutorials across the internet. That being said, my books still scream “engineer”: “Fundamentals of Microelectronics”, “Electric Circuits”, Stephen Hawking, Jeff Hawkins, O’Reilly books on various programming languages, and a book of Einstein quotes. I do read actual books: “The World According to Garp” is a recent favorite. The rest of my bookshelf contains remnants of past projects – ready to be re-purposed into new hacks.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

It’s tough to think of any special tricks off the top of my head, but that’s probably just because I use them so often that I don’t think of them as tricks! Does being insanely organized count as a trick? I keep all my parts organized and inventoried to ensure I always know where something is when I need it.

What has been your favorite project?

I’ve had a lot of favorite projects, so it’s really tough to pick just one… But if I had to, I’d have to go with the DeepNote Guitar Hero Robot. DeepNote is a project that I developed with 4 friends the summer before starting college. It watches a TV screen using photodidoes and accompanying circuitry, and is capable of playing the guitar hero video game with 99% accuracy on expert mode. It can even automatically activate star power (a bonus point mode) at strategic times, and can use the whammy bar to increase its score. Watch a video of it to get the full effect.

Unlike some other bots, ours does not use video feed information or pre-programmed song data. It watches for intensity spikes on the screen, filters them in both hardware and software, and determines what notes to play in real time. It also ascertains when it needs to play a chord, etc. Once the data has been captured, it’s sent to the guitar via a parallel interface. The sensor values are fed into circuitry that we retrofitted into the original guitar (picture). Solid-state relays activate signal lines that make the guitar think a button or strum is being activated. The guitar can be switched between automatic and manual modes using a switch on the front on the fly! When a song gets to hard, just let DeepNote take over.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

My most exciting noteworthy engineering experience actually happened a few weeks ago. I lead a team called Cornell University Sustainable Design. Recently, we went to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum to teach kids about sustainable engineering and architecture, and we tried to show the kids that engineering can be fun. For one of our activities, we had the kids build structures using gumdrops and toothpicks – it was meant to illustrate modular design practices, and to teach the kids about general engineering. I spent many hours with one kid in particular who built a stunning bridge, despite only being five years old. A few days later, I got an email from him saying that I was a role model to him, and that he hoped to some day go to school like Cornell where he too could get an engineering degree. No circuit design or project completion will ever make me as happy as when I hear that I’ve inspired a future scientist or engineer.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on several projects. I do research at Cornell’s Creative Machines Lab, where I work on Metabolic Machines and Programmable Matter. I also founded and lead Cornell University Sustainable Design’s Research Facility Team. We are currently designing a first-of-it’s-kind research building that will act as a “living-laboratory” for renewable energy, modular design, architectural prototyping, and more on Cornell’s campus. We plan to break ground in about a year. Outside of school, I produce electronics tutorial videos and many open source projects, which you can find on my blog. I also have plans to develop the second generation of my SudoGlove control system.

The idea with the SudoGlove was to develop an open-ended system that could easily be adapted to control just about any hardware or software device using natural hand gestures. The microcontroller is an arduino housed in a belt holster with all the accompanying circuitry, battery, and wireless transmitter. Gestures are sensed using a flex sensor, two force sensors, a vibration sensor, and a 2D gyroscope. Data is interpreted into digital vales in the belt holster, and transmitted wirelessly via Xbee protocol. Any device that sends the proper request command can then grab that data and use it as a control input. It’s even possible to control multiple devices at once. Current interfaces that I have developed for it include a remote control car, a music synthesizer program, and graphical debugging display, and a pair for RGB LED light wands.

I’m hoping to have some time to work on it this summer. I’ve already developed new debugging and music synthesizer software for it this past semester semester. Over the summer, I’ll be working at Makerbot Industries!

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

Business is booming. I don’t necessarily mean that I’m making tons of money – I mean that I’ve been producing content that people really seem to enjoy. People keep begging for more tutorial videos, open-source projects, and blog posts, so I’m going to keep making them! I try to give back to the community with my content because of how much they’ve already given to me. I don’t know if content production will ever turn into a full-time job for me (sometimes it feels like it already is), but regardless – I plan to stay as involved with the Maker and hobbyist communities as possible.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

I think the industry, particularly electronics distributors, need to better understand the needs of the hobbyist community. Companies that don’t offer products at a hobbyist price-point or quantity may soon realize that those same people are the ones who end up working for big engineering firms and ordering the parts. They’re going to go with the brands that they’ve used and trusted on their own – not the ones who were too prohibitive to purchase from.