Interview with Mathew Lee

Featured Engineer

Mathew Lee

Mathew Lee - Mechanical Engineer, EE Enthusiast, Product Developer, Founder of Oscium

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

As a child, I enjoyed trying to figure out how things worked. I knew before college started that I would be an engineer. During my time as a student at Oklahoma State University, I met some wonderful people that introduced me to programming, microcontrollers, and basic electrical engineering. After finishing my Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, I was lucky enough to land a job designing high performance remote control cars! I didn’t realize until after I graduated and started working that what I really wanted to be was an electrical engineer. I picked up a few books and started tinkering more with mechatronics, electrical design, RF design, PCB design, and more. I also was lucky enough to meet a few electrical engineers along the way that helped guide me in my discovery of electronics design. My electronics hobby has now become my real passion.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Electronic: Metcal iron, stereo microscope, and Oscium iMSO-104 of course!
Mechanical: Bridgeport mill 36” table w/ VFD and Model 482 Burr King w/ VFD (most useful shop tool ever).

What are your favorite software tools?

SolidWorks, PADs Power PCB, PSoC Designer, PSoC Creator, and vim

What is on your bookshelf?

Art of Electronics (Horowitz and Hill)
C Programming Language, 2nd Ed (Kernighan and Ritchie)

When did you first come up with the idea to start Oscium?

I have always wanted to be a business owner and was lucky to find two excellent business partners that are driven and extremely bright. When the iPhone was released, I knew that it would make the perfect portable test equipment platform. The touch interface has the capability to far surpass the user experience that is found on current equipment in the marketplace. When the iPad was introduced, it solidified my desire to bring our product to market. It seems that the manufacturers in the test equipment industry have focused on speed and neglected the user experience! Think about it…how much has your test equipment changed in 20 years?

How long did it take you to come up with a working prototype of your first product the iMSO-104?

I had a working prototype of the communications interface within a few weeks. The hardware and firmware took many months of development and testing. The difficult parts with the scope laid in the complexity in the UI and delivering an experience that was top notch. There are plenty of scopes on the market that have decided to copy the market leaders. We have tried our best to build a new platform from the bottom up.

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

Product development can be tricky! Most people get stuck trying to solve complex bugs. If you follow the plan below, there is no bug that is too difficult to solve.

There are two important principals:
1. If you do product development, you are going to have bugs. If you can duplicate the bugs, you can solve it.
2. Once you have identified the bug….break the problem in half. Once you have done this enough times, you will find the limit of the issue and the problem will be in front of you!

Sound easy? It’s not!

What are you currently working on?

My team and I are currently working on additional test equipment products. Oscium plans to ship a new product (different from the iMSO) in October.

What direction do you see the Electronics Industry heading in the next few years?

Trying to predict this is difficult so I will stick to test equipment. I suspect that the “lunchbox” style test equipment (with tons of knobs and buttons) may be a thing of the past. They take up a massive amount of desktop/lab bench space, usually perform a single function, and are typically tethered to the wall.

To learn more about Oscium and their products, visit: http://www.oscium.com

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