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Tour MacroFab's ITAR-Compliant Facility
August 5, 2016, Episode #27
- Our Guest this week is Kwabena Agyeman who runs OpenMV (Figure 1).
- The OpenMV project is about creating low-cost, extensible, Python-powered, machine vision modules and aims at becoming the “Arduino of Machine Vision” (Figure 2).
- Parker is using an OpenMV camera for the first iteration of the Semi-Automatic Inspection Machine.
- The great thing about Open Source is that you can fix bugs.
- OpenMV started as a Kickstarter.
- The original OV2640 Omni Vision camera sensor was discontinued and gray market parts where found but didn’t work. Replaced with the OV7725.
- KeySniffer sniffs cheap wireless keyboard protocols. We should take a page from BSG and go all wired to prevent Cylon infiltration.
- Facebook has a new Area 404 Hardware division. Could see some interesting hardware come out of this? Possibly similar to Bell Labs of ole?
Figure 1: Kwabena of OpenMV holding up an OpenMV panel.
Figure 2: OpenMV camera.
About the Hosts
Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig is a component engineer working in the aerospace industry. He has applied his electrical engineering knowledge in a variety of contexts previously, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing, audio electronic repair, and synthesizer design. A graduate of Texas A&M, Stephen has lived his adult life in the Houston, TX, and Denver, CO, areas.
Stephen has never said no to a project. From building guitar amps (starting when he was 17) to designing and building his own CNC table to fine-tuning the mineral composition of the water he uses to brew beer, he thrives on testing, experimentation, and problem-solving. Tune into the podcast to learn more about the wacky stuff Stephen gets up to.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!