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

My Dad was a radio operator at the end of WWII in occupied Germany. He taught me about radios and how they worked, told me lots of stories about stringing “aerials” in sub-zero weather. My brother liked anything to do with planes and rockets, radios and wires. As kids in west Texas, we had a tube-type radio with the cover off of it and this crazy long copper wire antenna we strung up to pick up KOMA out of Oklahoma City back in the early 1970s. We were always wiring up lights and toggle switches. The phone central office was at the end of the block so we always had masses of scrap insulated copper wire to work with. When I was around 13 my late Uncle Don gave me a joystick switch and Master Caution lamp out of an F-111 he was working on one time. I thought those were so cool. So I guess the love of electronics is an inherited thing that I thank my family for. I liked science fiction from the 1970s era and I watched the Apollo and space shuttle programs. I always dreamed that I’d work on Moonbase Alpha or something and believed that electronics was the way to get myself there. I experimented with Radio Shack’s and Logix-Kosmos’ electronics labs, studied Forrest M. Mims III Engineering Notebooks, and built music synthesizer kits from Paia. After high school, I attended the ELT program at TSTI (now TSTC) at Waco in the early 1980’s. I’ve taken a few drafting courses for my work and recently audited a Python programming class just for my own development. It’s been pretty much full throttle the whole way!

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

The tool I reach for most often is the Fluke 123 Industrial Scopemeter. It’s rugged and I can check things fast with it. National Instruments PXI system plus their LabView software gets my vote for best industrial test platform, hands down. You can drive anything with that; test anything from DC, digital I/O analog waveforms all the way through RF. For recording sounds I have a Tascam DR-100 and some awesome XLR microphones plus an M-Audio interface. I also use a Pilot U44+ programmer for burning Eproms, non-volatile rams and PALs, and this really nice B+K Precision power supply at my bench that drives most of my experimentation.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

Corel Draw is really great for creating accurate, scaled full color illustrations of entire projects down to the smallest components. I use this to coordinate every project that I work. I’ve drawn the complete Apollo Lunar Module panels 1:1 scale and every Radio Shack 276-something circuit boards with it, so it’s pretty amazing software. I’ve also ‘printed’ plexli and acrylic panels and small parts on the VersaLaser cutter with Corel Draw. I use AutoCAD 2010 for schematic and mechanical designs, Adobe Audition 2 for FFT sound analysis and sound/alert tone creation. LabView for creation of Virtual Instrument hardware testing protocols. Labview is the bomb, it seems to be written for hardware electronics people to write or I should say ‘draw’ programs in. I’m just getting started into the Xilinx ISE and Boldport Flow for programming FPGAs. LabView is a natural fit for programming multi-core processors and FPGAs as well. I’m really having fun with the Arduino programming environment for my Papilio FPGA board (“Wiring”-based environment). It’s great to be able to hammer out an idea in this version of C code and immediately go to hardware test with it. I’m from the old school of discrete 4000 and 74LS series chips and lots and lots of wire wrapping. While I still love this stuff, being able to draw these gates in the ISE and push them out to FPGA moments later puts me far ahead time wise as far as development and testing goes. The ability to replicate legacy logic boards with a single FPGA is thrilling to me. I’m looking forward to doing even more with Xilinx products in the future.

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

Probably the nastiest bug I ever fixed was years ago, a controller board where one D-latch was only intermittently clocking its signal through. Most of the chips had been already changed out when I was handed this “dog board”. It turned out to be a bad solder on the latch preset pull up resistor. Because the signal floated, the load of the scope probe would make it appear high. It wasn’t until I desoldered one leg of that resistor to check it that I found the problem. I also remember this one problem where a ladder of precision resistors was used to sample a +12, +5 and -12 power supply into an ADC0816 (which measures only 0 to +5 volts). This unit wouldn’t pass POST and they were about to replace a $1000 board, I found one resistor in the ladder had overheated and changed values causing the power supply test to fail. That was a fun one.

What is on your bookshelf?

• “Flights of Fantasy – Programming 3D Graphics in C++” – Chris Lampton.
• “Getting Started with Python” – Tony Gaddis.
• Arduino C language reference, (Papilio FPGA board).
• “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies”.
• My iPad is filled with datasheets and programming guides.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

My first electronics job involved many hours troubleshooting and repairing Z80 computer boards using only an oscilloscope and function tester. After a while you get mental pictures of what correct digital signals should look like, even the ‘dirty’ ones, and you learn to spot bad ones quickly. This knowledge has been like gold in my career and in my hobby as well. Often when there is a problem on a digital board, it can have a lot of symptoms (stuck interrupt inputs, stuck wait signals or data lines) that aren’t really the cause of the problem. One thing I think that has really saved me time and time again has been to have the best possible understanding of the chips and discrete components of the circuits I am working with.

What exactly does an Engineering Technician do?

My role is unusual in that as more of an on-site engineer I get to handle all facets of each project that comes my way. I think the term “technician” is more of a misnomer, I do design and development work, not repair and maintenance. On any given project we conceive the method, compile the engineering study, design all mechanical and electrical components, create or modify the AutoCAD drawings, procure the parts, have some panels and mechanical items fabricated off-site; others we fab ourselves. We fabricate all our own mil-standard cables, install, test, and then create the supporting documents. In Hardware Engineering we call ourselves “The One-Stop Shop”. We often have to expand ourselves beyond what we currently know to take on bigger and more challenging projects. Over all, we’ve been amazed at what we’ve been able to accomplish and with all the positive attitudes that are prevalent, I think the best is yet to come.

What has been your favorite project?

My favorite home project to date is an 8-bit computer I created jokingly named HAL9000. It was based around a vintage Z80 industrial controller. I owe much of hardware interfacing and assembly language design that I’ve learned to the HAL. I built custom boards with lots of DIP chips, wire wrapping and timing interfaces including a driver board to handle simulated aircraft instruments – so for a while it was one of my primary tools at work. Through it I’ve learned how floating point math works both in hardware and software engines, down to the bit level. So now I’m amazed when I see these massive spatial image generators, the amount of FP number crunching that goes on inside. The website I created for the HAL (which was recently featured in EEWeb) and all the wonderful people that I met through it became as big a part of the experience as actually working with the HAL. These days I’m really enjoying my Papilio Spartan 3E FPGA board and all the great things I can do with it and its “wing” boards. When you love what you do, every project is a favorite, isn’t it?

Don’t you get tired of electronics at work and at home?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t do electronics around the clock. Actually, I’m very much a family man. My wife and I have three great kids at home and one grown and gone. It seems we are constantly coaching a team or doing something with our kids and the nephews or teaching classes at the church we attend. Family is my priority in my off-work hours, and I enjoy piddling around in my yard. Many times it’s well after my kids are in bed for the night that I get to sneak off to the workshop. And lots of times they are in the shop with me chatting while I work on things. We’re planning to put together a simple FPGA controlled robot for my son’s Science class this year.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

I’m not famous by any stretch of the imagination. But when I can create a project that fulfills some need and see it through each step of the way from concept to final product – to me that’s a note-worthy experience. I’m very blessed to have both a job and a hobby that allows me this creative freedom. The best things I have accomplished are projects where some critically needed legacy device and some new technology item were coming together, and I designed the method by which those two things play nice with each other. I think it’s a special nitch that I occupy being both from the “old school” of electronics and new tech as well. Well, maybe not quite so old – I was talking to a guy a couple of weeks ago who worked on a tube-type flight simulator back in the day! But I really love a manufacturer to look at something I’ve built for their equipment and they say “How does that work? We’ve never seen anything like this before.” It makes me happy to create things that far exceed what people are expecting of me, are easy to learn and use and work reliably.

What are you currently working on?

Although I am getting into this part of the field late, I am currently learning to program FPGAs, particularly the Spartan 3E. I see these as a fantastic tool to rapidly fab and test prototype ideas on the bench in a fraction of the time it used to take. I’m also designing and building a mobile touchscreen driven system to test and calibrate simulated aircraft instruments. To create an all-new tester I’ve selected a portable sloped 19” equipment rack on casters. I’m having a special power supply built for it and a custom front connector panel that is being fabricated from aluminum. It’ll have about 25 connectors on it and I’m designing a custom PCB for the electrical connection matrix. LabView virtual instruments drive the test bed and I’ll be fabricating the cables for the instruments. It’s expandable, so there will be few limits on what instruments, circuit boards and other electrical devices we can test with it. I’m very excited about this project. On the home front, I’m building three foot wide LED digital display for the Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby races that counts each lane’s race time to the thousandths of a second, calculates and displays the cars’ scale MPH. It should be a big hit, I’m hoping. I’ve got a few other little projects like scrolling LED signs in work as well including a massive rack-mount power supply I’m building for my 19” rack.

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

Cost containment and lean thinking I believe are going to be the driving forces behind much of what we do in the years ahead. Continuous evaluation of processes to find ways to cut wasted time, materials and energy are going to be tantamount to survival. Engineering hours are costly so I believe more cutbacks are coming, but in flight and maintenance simulation, reliability and safety are barriers that cannot be breached. Also, there’s a lot of older equipment still operating in many industries. They represent significant engineering and investment costs; it can’t always just be thrown out and replaced with the newest and shiniest things. You have to think “cost effective solution.” Many of the projects I work are a harmonious marriage of this legacy equipment with new technology. I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed working with some older electronics in years past. I also create things that support equipment that is out of production. People who can stand in the gap and design for both old and new e-tech and make these things work together are going to continue to be invaluable resources.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

The biggest challenge in our industry I believe is creating interest in electronics and engineering in general to this next generation of young people. Many companies are predicting a huge shortfall of engineers in the near future as seasoned and experienced people reach retirement age. A wealth of accumulated knowledge and experience is walking out the doors of the electronics field. I believe the key to facing this challenge is for us to develop mentoring relationships with young people today. My hope is that we instill in them self-motivation, the desire to learn and create, to have big dreams plus have the knowledge and ability to implement them. Electronics people, both technicians and engineers are going to need many talents, electrical and mechanical, programming plus deep knowledge of how electronic components work. As programmable devices are implemented more and more I believe the lines between field technician and design engineer, software programmer and hardware engineer are going to be largely blurred in the years to come as the fields continue to overlap. The electronics industry is going to be led by those who have a strong drive to learn everything they can get their hands on and who aren’t afraid to go out of their comfort zones to design new and better things. Innovation is only going to come when we can say not just “How can I complete this project” but rather “How can I make this project a great product?”

Where can we read more?

My website is located at http://www.joelowens.org. I hope you’ll drop by! I converse with lots of people associated with electronics and FPGA work on Twitter, my handle there is @GalacticaSound.