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

When I was a kid my school sent me to a NeuralLinguistic Programming center. They said I had some sort of learning disability. The NLP folks suggested to my mom that I get a computer and play games with it. Mom bought me an Apple II clone and we both tried to figure out how to use it. At 16 years old I decided to finish High School at a community college which freed up many hours that I used to get to know the computer. By the time I was twenty I worked for three fortune 100 companies (AT&T, Morgan Stanley and Hughes Aerospace) as a UNIX admin managing 3 of the top 100 supercomputers in the world. Mom became a computer teacher.

Years of debugging hardware issues on the big iron helped me to realize that my interest was in the small parts that made up these systems. Without an EE background I started out by reading the usual EE literature, Forest M. Mims III and Horowitz and Hill. At 25 I began programming microcontrollers.

Around the same time a friend suggested that I make illuminated clothing to prepare for my first year attending the desert art festival called Burning Man. In the festivals temporary city called Black Rock it is customary to wear illumination, many wear glow sticks or self made electronics, in order to avoid being run over by a rogue bicycle rider or art car. I took his advice and started connecting up LEDs and EL-Wire and adhering them to my clothing. The same friend scoffed at what I made and suggested that I sequence the lights with a microcontroller. Thinking that this was a fine idea, I took his suggestion and found myself in a 10 year long infatuation with hardware development and the proud owner of a closet full of illuminated garments.

What are your favorite hardware / software tools that you use?

• ZenToolWorks 7×7 CNC – It’s a $300 CNC kit that costs about $700 once you include all the necessary accessories and shipping. It took me about 2 days to assemble the kit and a few weeks to get quality results. I mill PCBs and plexiglass for enclosures on it several times a week. It’s one of those tools that can pay for itself in the first few months.
• Rii mini i6 – A mini cordless keyboard with built in mouse not much larger than a cell phone. This is ideal for turning the CNC on/off, re-homing for bit changes and resuming at specific locations with new values. I can’t believe people run CNCs without this device. It works with flawlessly osx/linux/win.
• AVR JTAG Programmer MKI Clone – Nothing has saved me more time developing firmware than having single step hardware debug ability. This $50 device allows me to quickly see variables and watch code flow as it executes on the chip. JTAG debugging is one of those things that seperates the newbies from the senior hardware developers. Beginners might use Arduino or even ISP just blindly uploading hex files and tossing printf’s all over their code. Once you feel the power of JTAG debugging you’ll never want to go back.
• gEDA gschem and pcb – In 2002 I was looking for a tool suite to design circuits with. Eagle’s was around, but with a share license and board size limitation. Other commercial tools were not a option as I’ve always been a loyal to open source. I wanted a design suite that worked with Linux and OS/X.

Here is what I love about the gEDA bundle:

• totally open source
• plain text for data files (makes for fast batch editing)
• generates gcode for CNC
• generates gerbers for professional printing
• ports easily
• great mailing list support
• designed for the hard core UNIX geek

What is on your bookshelf?

Nothing these days. I’ve made the shift to audio books and epubs. I’m reading the Steve Jobs biography on the iPhone S4. A few gigantic catalogs from Digikey, Mouser, McMaster take up my only shelf space these days. I flip through them when I am looking for the perfect backlit toggle switch or solenoid valve. I sold most of my physical books through Amazon or donated them to a local coffee shop. I tried using a kindle thinking that it was the way of the future but realized that I prefer to read text on my MacBook Air or iPhone 4s.

Can you tell us about your “Chipped” Project?

In 2005 I became interested in RFID and noticed in particular it’s lack of security, privacy issues and potential for bridging the digital and physical world. I had been giving talks at the time about the inherent dangers of RFID and eventually I decided that if I really wanted to understand this technology I would need to test it more. I ordered a reader, chip and syringe and implanted a $2 tag into my left hand. Others had done the same and we communicated on a message board known as the “tagged” forum. My front door and fire trampoline are the only two projects that can read the chip in my hand. The chip brought about a lot of interest and I was on or in CNN, Fox, NY Times even the Daily Show. I appreciated the opportunity to speak about some of the problems such as legislation that does not protect individuals from being scanned in public places.

What has been your favorite project?

My favorite project is the “High Lighter“ a trampoline that shoots fireballs. I designed it shortly I quit my IT job in NYC. I had been working in IT for almost fifteen years and I was itching for something different. My girlfriend and I packed our things and moved to a small town in the middle of New Mexico. Once we arrived I dove in and made the useless, but totally amusing flame thrower and connected it up to a trampoline. It took about six months to complete. I managed to put a lot of bizarre stuff into this device. It has a RFID reader that can scan my implanted chip (this prevents kids from using it unsupervised); an ultrasonic sensor at the base of the trampoline detects the distance of the trampoline from the ground; and I added in text LCD to show jump heights and flame intensity along with a black and white infrared camera and a LCD TV to show the person jumping. The trampoline is capable of shooting 8’ tall fireballs when maxed. The fire part is straight forward just a solenoid valve releasing propane into a pilot light based on the jump data gathered at the trampoline. After years in a cube using my brain it felt great to create a giant toy and my hands too.

Can you tell us about your project involving LED Grow lights?

While considering how to solve life problems that revolved around essential things like power, fuel, and food, I became briefly obsessed with growing food indoors. I put together a grow light made of only red and blue LEDs that was pulsing at 720Hz. A friend had told me about a white paper from China and interesting results based on this configuration. I found that a lot of power could be saved by limiting the light to peak photosynthesis wavelengths (again, blue and red). Using peak photosynthesis wasn’t necessarily the best idea. The plants were weird. Adding white LEDs or more light in general might have balanced things out. According the white paper plants can’t tell the difference between light pulsing at 720Hz vs light that is continuously on. Pulsing LEDs stay cooler and reduce the power consumption of the light.

What are you currently working on?

I’ve had a significant lifestyle change over the last six years. I used to wear a suit and tie and work on a stock exchange trading floor. Now I live off-grid, grow food, collect rain water, build unusual structures out of paper and make fuel for my car. In order to fund my back-to-the-land lifesytle I design control systems for small alternative energy companies in New Mexico. A Santa Fe company commissioned me to build a system to monitor and control the growth of algae. I’m almost finished with that project. At the moment I’m also selling a fermentation kit that controls the temperature of any appliance that is plugged into it. I sell it through my on-line store.

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

I’m following the Adafruit model. I setup a Zen Cart based an on-line store. I sell my projects in two forms, as kits and pre assembled. I plan to produce 2 to 4 new electronics kits each year and I hope to limit the amount of consulting that I need to do as a result.

What is your most difficult challenge?

Sensors are tricky, some are expensive. I’m always trying to find sensors that don’t blow my budget.

What are you excited about?

Home fabrication and mail order. I’m thrilled to see so many small businesses selling finished electronic projects and kits. Today it seems like everybody has a favorite board house, how liberating. Home CNC, Laser Cutters or 3D printers are becoming common. I love reading about people who are manufacturing at home in mass by using stencils, solder paste and toaster ovens to do so. People are making a living without commutes and cubicles.

What opportunities do you see for the engineering world?

The alternative energy world needs help growing algae, monitoring PV Solar system performance and automating the production of biodiesel. These are all relatively simple tasks from a EE perspective. People who work in these fields don’t realize how much of their processes could be automated by having engineers design systems. For example I made controllers that modify refrigerators to run at twice the efficiency of energy star models; I converted my vehicle to run on waste oil; and I used a microcontroller to solve both problems. It amazes me that startup companies in the alternative energy field don’t keep a in house hardware person on staff to do rapid prototyping and problem solving. An on staff engineer could save them money and time and could bring their products to market faster and with more capabilities.

• My Website.