Representative Engineering Projects:
- Developed several novel portable wireless, battery powered, data capture devices for medical research. These included a Bluetooth radio, microcontroller, mixed signal Analog Front End, local SD Card storage, USB interface and Smart Phone and PC support software.
- Developed several MFI Accessories for iPhone and iPad that provided ethernet capabilities over High-Speed Lightning/USB. The firmware coordinated all Apple required protocol communication, authentication and the task of synchronizing ethernet hardware DMA and USB messages. The device also supported firmware update from iOS (over USB connection). Developed stand-alone network stack to run on iOS.
- Developed a line of Bluetooth iPhone/Android accessories that facilitate the connection of high-end survey grade GPS devices. The device routes NMEA data from serial, Bluetooth or USB data sources and can be configured to apply local small coordinate offsets.
- Developed a custom, gesture recognition Human Interface USB peripheral that ran a custom embedded scripting programming language within a micro-VM.
- Created custom STM32 firmware for Cortex M0 and M4 that used HCI interface to Bluetooth module and provided a firmware update mechanism for either USB or Over the Air (layered on BTLE). Also included PC and iOS apps for firmware update.
- Designed a microcontroller-based USB charging cable for a major wearable product company.
- Developed a general purpose, network connected, manufacturing fixture controller for a major consumer electronics manufacturer.
- Developed Bluetooth Low Energy firmware (Ti 2650 and Freescale K50) that used a stand-alone security framework for authentication, and encrypted messages between devices. Included test apps developed on iOS using CoreBluetooth (Peripheral and Central).
- Developed a non-iBeacon Bluetooth Low Energy locating device.
- Developed scheme for a custom USB device to deliver its own host software installer by temporarily emulating a Flash Drive. Device automatically senses if its software is already running and if so, bypasses its flash drive.
- Developed Peer-to-Peer messaging and file transfer application that was designed to be self-discovering and run on Ad-Hoc networks (no internet required). Uses UDP for discovery and SSL for message and file transfers. Runs on Mac OS X and Windows and was published to Mac App Store.
- Developed hardware and firmware for a complex device control bus comprising boards each with 7 or 9 processors (STM32 Cortex M3’s) communicating on an RS-485 bus. The project involved a master that coordinated each of the slave nodes. There were also hot-plugging modules that provided USB connectivity to Linux, Mac or Windows host. The master firmware would discover and store in flash the topography of the RS-485 connected devices. This was because each installation of the system could be different. The individual slave boards were intended to be modular resulting in different types of topographies. The systems also contained IR sensing capability with a simple bit protocol layered on the IR stream. This allowed external devices to send simple alert updates which the system could report over USB to various hosts.
Representative Legal Services:
- Served as testifying Expert Witness for the patent invalidation action Microsoft v Smart Skins, LLC involving smart phone peripherals. This involved analyzing prior art in other earlier patents. The action received a favorable ruling from the PTAB.
- Served as testifying Expert Witness for the defendants in a suit involving two semiconductor companies. Issues included the testing of various SATA communication scenarios. Helped case settle on terms very favorable to defendant.
- Served as Expert Witness in patent litigation involving programmable TV Remote Controls
- Performed forensic engineering analysis for the legal department of a large security sensor manufacturer.
- Managed a “Big Data” Analytics project for Lawyers in a complex class action litigation