Engineering Highlights

2018-present : Evaporative Cooler Controller

A color touchscreen controller that uses bluetooth and wifi and an external temperature sensor to provide the most comfortable indoor environment with no modifications to your existing evaporative cooler. Much more efficient than air conditioning, evaporative cooling is the earth-friendly way to stay cool, and now, more comfortable than ever.

2017: An iPhone app

I wrote the modest iPhone app Oh Hell Scorekeeper as an exercise to introduce myself to Apple’s Swift programming language and the Xcode development environment.

My career was derailed by a neck injury in late 2004 that left me unable to do engineering work. In 2017, the injury resolved and I am back at work.

2004: For Odic Inc. (Westford, MA), an ultrasonic ranging device

Brought in by this consulting firm to take over a project for an ultrasonic ranging application, I wrote all firmware (in C) and improved the Atmel-based hardware design, exceeding performance requirements.

2000: For E Ink Corporation (Cambridge, MA), a sign remote controller

I designed hardware and firmware for a small standalone communications & sign controller that had the ability, in remote locations, to autonomously go online and retrieve complex scheduled information to be displayed on one of the company’s unique signs. It could also receive the same information via pager. The tiny device not only implemented all the needed protocols, as well as message decryption, error checking, storage, and scheduling capabilities, but it also provided extensive configuration and diagnostics capabilities, remote or local.

1997: For 3Com (formerly NBX Corporation, Andover, MA), the world’s first VOIP PBX

I designed the circuit hardware (based on Texas Instruments TMS320 series DSP) for a feature telephone set and quad telephone line interface, two of the three primary components for NBX’s award-winning^a VOIP (voice over IP, or ethernet-based) office telephone system.  During my design, I identified a bug in the DSP design which resulted in a respin by TI.  My designs^b comprised the bulk of the hardware for what would later be touted as “the world’s only reliable convergent [ie, IP-based] business telephone system.”^c Company management realized a desirable buyout by 3Com¹.  Only NBX, out of 7 companies that tried, succeeded in bringing a reliable ethernet-based PBX system to market. Ranked #1 in IP PBX sales in 2001 for the third straight year, 3Com in 2002 announced sales of over $300 million worth of the phone systems.  The reliable NBX system successfully expanded from 100 initially to as many as 1,500 users^2,3 per system, greatly enhancing market opportunities.

1996: For Lucent Technologies (N. Andover, MA), a better algorithm

As a contractor, I received an award for innovation in the development of a power control algorithm for a distributed hybrid fiber/coax transmission system. (At the time of the award, Lucent was still known as AT&T).

1993: For Dialogic Corporation (Parsippany, NJ), the industry’s leading speech processing platform

The Antares speech processing platform (my VPro-4 design with a modified audio interface) became the leading platform for PC-based telecommunications speech processing and remained so until 2003, thanks to Intel⁴.  Originally conceived by me as an open platform for VPC, my concept was brought to life by Dialogic (under VPC’s license) and supported by leading telecom signal processing algorithm vendors^5,6.  The hardware’s reliability, cost-effectiveness, and powerful features gave the product a lifetime all but unheard of among PC-based products.

1993: For Voice Processing Corporation (Cambridge, MA), hardware that “opened doors”

I designed the VPro-4, a Texas Instruments TMS320-based quad processor open platform for PC-based speech processing.  Introduced in 1993, it became a cornerstone of VPC’s business. In lauding the design, VPC’s CEO Merrill Solomon commented “The VPro-4 opened doors for us.” (VPC was subsumed in 2002 under Philips Speech Processing whose SpeechWave product ran on Antares platforms.)

1984: For Phone-Mate (Torrance, CA), the best answering machine line

Hired as one of three product design managers, I was promoted to responsibility for all new product design. One of my answering machine designs was rated head and shoulders above all competitive models by Consumer Reports. Thanks in part to that and my efforts to improve product quality and user-friendliness, Phone Mate experienced a sales increase in one year from $42.3 to $71.8 Million, surpassing Panasonic to #1 worldwide in answering machine sales.

1982: For American Telecommunications Corp. (El Monte, CA), the breakthrough electronic ringer

My innovative ringer transducer design was the first piezo-based design anywhere to meet Telco standards for sound quality (previously, only mechanical ringers performed to such standards).  It quickly became a company-wide standard, with annual production on the order of 500,000 telephone set ringers.

1978: For Bose Corporation (Framingham, MA), a patented bass boost

I co-invented ‘Dynamic Equalization’, a patented component (US 4179669 A, Dec 18, 1979) of the Delco-Bose car audio and Bose ‘Acoustic Wave’ portable systems. This innovation gave dramatically superior bass performance to Bose portable, automotive, and powered home audio products.