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Position
Brief synopsis of duties

2008-13 Raven Research, Berks

Senior Design Engineer

Raven are primarily and RF design company working in the 1-100GHz areas. They design various RF distribution systems and switches, Radio test systems and tracking devices. My role was hardware development, embedded code and PC applications. I retired from this company, and was fortunate to end my career with a friendly and highly talented group of people. It wasn't always so.

2007-8 3M European HQ, Bracknell, Berks

Design Engineer

3M operate in almost every country in the world and have electronic labs in several of them. I have designed hardare and software for a USB interface for a product, CAN interfacing and other designs relating to this area.

September 2006 - May 2007 Silicon Silence, Chipping Norton, Oxon

Principal Engineer

Silicon Silence are a start-up company who have just landed significant funding. Based upon a new algorithm for DSP and signal recovery.

2000- 2005 Innovision R&T PLC,Wokingham, Berks

Design Engineer

My key achievements at Innovision include the design of a three transistor RF ID tag reader that led directly to the development of the world’s smallest RF ID reader. In 2003 I was heavily involved in a biometric system, using an infra red structured light array to construct 3D images. This involved some hardware design and a complex C++ application. I developed an intelligent tag to log time, temperature and interference, using a custom RTOS. More recently I have been developing automated production test systems for Far East manufacturers, and a tag application for vending machines, using embedded C.

1998-2000 European Technology Group, Esher, Surrey

Technical Manager

My role as Technical Manager was responsibility for the day to day operation of the service function. In addition I developed test and repair techniques, and trained engineers in these methods.

1995-1998 Norsk Data, Newbury, Berks

R&D Manager

This was a free ranging role in which my main task was to identify the technical issues of the company and to provide solutions. In addition, I designed numerous pieces of equipment as specified the Norsk Data’s clients, as a product differentiation service. Very much hands on, designing hardware and software solutions.

1980-1995 Granada Computer Services International PLC, Berks

R&D Manager ( Europe and USA)

GCSI was the amalgamation of Mainstay, CFM and DPCE – whom I joined as a field engineer in 1980. By 1985 I had become R&D manager and filed the first of five patents that were the result of some of my projects. These projects were all various support systems for Mainframe service problems. I re-designed an inter-active TV system (NTSC) that the US division were marketing, and also built a European (PAL) version that was installed in Glasgow. I was heavily involved in the restructuring of GCSI, a task which involved numerous audits on a European scale. I gained my elementary certificate in German via night school, while at GCSI.

1973-1980 Telefusion Ltd, Blackpool, Lancs

Engineer/ServiceManager/Regional Trainer

I joined Telefusion as a career advance. From engineer I progressed to Service Manager ( breaking records for profitability) , and on to become the Regional Trainer.

1970-1973 LLoyds TV Ltd, Beaconsfield, Berks

Bench engineer

This was my first position following my training period, and a short spell as a disc jockey in Germany. I completed my Radio and TV serving to City and Guilds upon leaving HM Forces.

1965-1970 94 Locating Regiment, Royal Artillery

Radar Operator grade 1/REME

I joined the RA almost straight from school. Exempt Army education ( by virtue of passing all tests given), I took my first correspondence course in electronics, and spent a year on detachment to REME for training in radar. My grade of B1 was unusual since this grade was normally that of a sergeant, whilst I achieved it as a gunner (private soldier).


Personal details

General

Full UK driving license. No endorsements.
Married, 30 years. Two sons.
Quirky sense of humour, strong team player and motivator/innovator. I like to ask the question "What if ?".

Interests

DIY, fishing, Golf. Writing fiction (as yet unpublished). Travel. Reading. I enjoy acquiring new knowledge.

Education

1960-1965 Downhills Central school, Tottenham, London. Downhills was a unique school, placed in between secondary modern and grammar. As such the curriculum and style was that of a grammar school. I left Downhills prior to my GCE year. In 2000 I commenced an OU Honours Degreee in IT and Computing, for the purpose of formalizing the skills I have acquired.

Open University Modules

MU120 ‘O’ level mathematics to A level.
MST121 ‘A’ level mathematics to year 2 University level.
T173 Introduction to engineering
T223 Microprocessors (and C)
T262 C++ (Borland) - distinction
M206 OO, UML, modeling, Use cases, Smalltalk
T209 Communication technologies. Broad overview; networks,GSM,VOip etc.
T396 Artificial Intelligence ( Flex, Flint, Prolog, Neural Networks)
M301 Systems modeling, Java (OO and UML), concurrency, CORBA,RMI.
T426 The AI project – Image recognition with Neural Networks

Open University Result

I achieved a grade 2 pass in all modules except T262-C++ ( distinction). My final year project was concerned with face recognition. I wrote a C++ pre-processor that extracted vectors from input jpeg images. These vectors were also loaded with simulated noise. The vectors were then used as input to a Neural Network. The objective was to see how well a simple vector might function, and the results were very surprising. A hard copy of the project is available, and also a ‘poster’ presentation that captures the key features of the process.

My degree is : 2.1 (Hons) IT & Comp (Open)


Skill Set

Analogue design. Power supplies, signal processing, audio to video frequencies - reasonably broad range of experience, but not to RF.

Digital design, interface to analogue, drive and control circuits. - Lot of experience interfacing to a wide range of devices.

Microprocessor systems, discrete micros and embedded controllers - Lately mainly Microchip devices, but many other systems too.

RF ID, NFC - Five years working in this field.

Schematic layout and pcb design, Protel SE/DXP - Lot of SE experience, six months DXP.

Schematic layout and pcb design, Orcad - three or four months with these tools.

Assembler programming, Intel 80xx, 68xx, 63xx, EMC devices, ELAN, Microchip - lot of experience

Assembler programming, TI TMS 760, Renesas H8/300, Sunplus - a little experience with these devices.

MMPLAB, MP ICE , IDE tools, debuggers and emulators.

CCS C, Hi-Tek C - A lot of experience with CCS but moving onto the Microchip C complier now.

RS323, SPI, I2C, CAN, USB - Some CAN and simple USB interfaces, based upon PIC devices. Extensive RS232,SPI,I2C

ANSI C

C++ ( Borland Builder, SDK),Delphi

HTML, Java
Some exposure, mainly during my degree.

Smalltalk, Flex, Prolog, AI and fuzzy logic

Word/Excel (VB,VBA) etc
Elmentary German
Low cost design.
Proven willingness and ability to rapidly learn new skills.


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