What’s in your soft skill toolbox? Eli Hughes is a true full-stack hardware engineer and a co-founder of Tzero Brew. He joins the OnTrack podcast to share his insights on how to foster innovation, manage upstream failure, build trust with your fellow engineers and stakeholders, and develop your soft skills—and other non-technical skills we use to communicate with each other and solve problems effectively. 

Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

Intro to Eli

Meeting the challenges of working remotely

A lesson in engineering from a kindergartener

”Soft skills for hardware”; humanity in engineering 

Timing and Perception: Shifting targets as customer needs change

Too easy to be negative; finding positivity in global challenges

How constraints foster innovation

Wants vs Needs: building trust with fellow developers

Jeremy Blum’s take on ‘Empathic Engineering’

You make it, you fix it: managing upstream failure

Believing in the Mission: how ordinary people do extraordinary things

The Part vs the Whole: Lee Ritchey’s homemade Apollo 11 boards

Elon Musk & Tony Stark: the power of unification

Expanding your sphere of influence by thinking holistically 

How students at TU Delft is helping paraplegics walk again

Mining Sci-fi and fantasy reading for soft skills

Now is the time: get out of your comfort zone!

Links and Resources:

Eli Hughes AltiumLive Presentation: Crossing the ChasmAltiumLive 2020 PresentationsJeremy Blum AltiumLive 2018: Empathic EngineeringOnTrack Insight with Lee RitcheyAltium Stories: Project March (Exoskeleton)Eric Bogatin Amazon Author PageOnTrack Insight VideosArticle:  5 Essential Soft Skills for a Successful Career in Engineering

 

Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics

The OnTrack Podcast welcomes Hans Klos, founder and CEO of Sintecs, a simulation service provider and developer of the HyperLynx® Connector tool. HyperLynx® Connector is a freeware application which seamlessly bridges the gap between Mentor Graphics’ HyperLynx and Altium Designer. 

Join us as Hans and Judy discuss the HyperLynx Connector tool, their upcoming webinar collaboration, and common signal integrity pitfalls.

 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.Share and Collaborate. Everything in One Place.

 

Watch the video, clickhere.

 

Show Highlights

Hans Klos, founder and CEO of Sintec

Rethinking Frequency and Rise and Fall times

Common signal integrity pitfalls

The problem with blindly trusting reference boards

The Benefit of Simulation vs. Design & Measure

The shift toward board level issues

Why IoT devices are driving the need for simulation

Sintecs’ HyperLynx Connector

How design engineers can access Hyperlinx affordably

Syntecs’ free training videos

Resources:

Hans Klos on LinkedIn

Signal Integrity Related Articles on AltiumⓇ Resource Hub

Sintecs Website

Hyperlynx SI/ALT Bundle Offer

Hans Klos LinkedIn Profile

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.Share and Collaborate. Everything in One Place.

On May 16, 1994, the Signal Integrity List (SI-List) was founded, with just 30 members on its charter email list. Today, there are more than 4,000 members worldwide, and the list includes Signal Integrity gurus like Istvan Novak, Todd Hubbing, Steve Weir, and Scott McMorrow. 

 

In this episode of the OnTrack Podcast, one of those world renown SI gurus, Scott McMorrow, CTO of Samtec Inc.’s Signal Integrity Group, connects with Judy Warner to discuss signal integrity concerns, and especially Samtec’s Webinar series, gEEk spEEk. 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights

Scott McMorrow, CTO of Signal Integrity Group at Samtec Inc

A quick overview of Samtec

What is gEEk spEEk? 

Learn something in 60 minutes; gEEk spEEk’s online content

How to sign up for gEEk spEEk

Using gEEk spEEk for internal training

How Signal Integrity List got its start

Judy’s big question: “When did you know you were gonna be an engineer?”

Resources:

Scott McMorrow on LinkedIn

gEEk spEEk Webinars (On-demand) 

Samtec Website

Making Connections! Scott McMorrow, on Building Relationship with Samtec as a Connector Supplier

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

OnTrack welcomes Natasha Baker, CEO of SnapEDA. Natasha is an electrical engineer with fourteen years of experience who founded SnapEDA after seeing a need for a ‘Google of electronics components’. SnapEDA is, the world’s first electronics design search engine, currently serves more than a million professional engineers,  and supports the development of more than 400,000 unique hardware products every year. 

Natasha joins us to discuss the origin of SnapEDA, its free automated part builder, Instabuild, and what transparency means to engineering.

Altium Designer, Uncompromising PCB Design Experience

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

Introducing Natasha Baker, CEO of SnapEDA

SnapEDA: an origin story 

What SnapEDA is and what it does

PCB Librarians and ‘rogue libraries’

Consistency and transparency: Managing IPC compliance

Additional benefits of using SnapEDA

Broader implications of SnapEDA’s platform population

What attracted Natasha Baker to engineering?

How to access the SnapEDA APIs, plugins, and tools 

Instabuild: an automation tool 

Transparency in the engineering environment

Meeting challenges in the absence of universal file formats

SnapEDA’s post-coronavirus resilience

Natasha on engineering trends and where it goes from here

Links and Resources:

Natasha Baker on Linkedin

Main SnapEDA website: www.snapeda.com

InstaBuild: www.snapeda.com/instabuild

Plugins (including a brand new Altium plugin!): www.snapeda.com/plugins 

An interview with Natasha Baker on Youtube

 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Chris Denney is CTO of Worthington Assembly and cohost of the ‘Pick, Place, Podcast’ podcast. He joins OnTrack to tell us about his talk, which is titled “Your Manufacturer Is Stupid - Help Them”. Learn the five tentpole problems your manufacturers have to deal with, and how avoiding these simple issues will speed your projects through assembly.

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

Humble beginnings; intro to Worthington Assembly CTO Chris Denney

Chris Gammel and the Amp Hour podcast

The story behind “Your Manufacturer is Stupid - Help Them”

No. 1: Identifying polarity of components

No. 2: Silkscreen legibility (avoid incurring extra costs)

No. 3: Panelization (why it matters)

No. 4: PCB properties (use a template)

No. 5  Specific manufacturer’s part numbers

Bonus tip: Plated Through-hole sizes

Worthington, Circuithub,and the Pick, Place, Podcast

Links and Resources:

Chris Denney on Linkedin

Worthington Assembly Blog (Includes Chris’s presentation from Kicon 2019)

CircuitHub Website

Design With Manufacturing Panel from AltiumLive 2020

Pick, Place, Podcast

 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

According to the World Health Organization, 2 billion people across the globe rely on contaminated water sources. Dr. Cody Friesen, founder of SOURCE and Fulton Engineering professor saw this problem, and developed the SOURCE® Hydropanel, a device which can extract water vapor from ambient air to create clean, potable water using the power of the sun. 

Cody Friesen joins the OnTrack podcast to discuss materials science, entrepreneurship, the ASUIO competition, and how he came to develop the hydropanel. 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Watch the video, click here. 

Show Highlights:

Cody Friesen and materials science

SOURCE and the search renewable water 

Alarming statistics: clean drinking water and foodborne illness

SOURCE Hydropanels: how they work and what they do

Why hydropanels are a massive multidisciplinary problem

The worldwide impact of SOURCE Hydropanel technology

ECEDHA (The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Head Association)

Entrepreneurship and the ASUIO competition 

Apples, Soundskrit, and chip-scale LIDAR

Trends in PCB Design amid the rise of Electrical Engineers

EEs and cross disciplinary synergy

Links and Resources:

Cody Friesen on Linkedin

Source Global on LinkedIn

www.Source.co

Apply to the 2021 ASU Innovation Open

Who is Source Water?

Cody Friesen featured on BBC Video Spotlight Future Innovators

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

The AltiumLive Virtual Summit is just around the corner! So in a unique episode of OnTrack, we share clips of Robert Feranec, motherboard designer and founder and CEO of Fedeval Academy, speaking on such topics as IoT device security in an increasingly connected world, the pitfalls of underestimating the complexity of your fellow stakeholder’s job, and the value of attending AltiumLive. This is a short and impactful episode you shouldn’t miss.  

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Watch the video, click here. 

Show Highlights:

Introduction to Robert Feranec, Founder of Fedevel Academy

From design engineer to educator: Robert’s career trajectory 

Learn, Connect, Get Inspired: Robert on the value of AltiumLive 

”It’s never simple”: the illusion of simplicity in other stakeholders’ jobs

Security and the rise of security of IoT devices

Altium 365 and cloud security: Amazon Web Service’s Dave Pellerin’s AltiumLive keynote

Links and Resources:

Register for FREE: AltiumLive 2020 Virtual Summit

Connect with Rober Feranec. Join the conversation on Discord

Robert Feranec on LinkedIn

Robert Feranec on How to Implement The PCB Design Process

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Dugan Karnazes (Velocity Research), Rob Cooke (Calumet Electronics), and Chris Denney (Worthington Assembly) join the OnTrack podcast to relay their experiences while working on the OSV (Open Source Ventilator) project. The OSV project is a global coalition formed entirely of volunteer engineers, corporations, manufacturers, and hospital systems which helped alleviate world-wide ventilator shortages at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn how Dugan, Rob, and Chris helped the Open Source Ventilator project design, manufacture, and supply ventilators in record time.  

Watch the video, click here. 

 

Show Highlights

Introduction to Dugan Karnazes, Rob Cooke, and Chris Denney 

When engineering projects go viral: How the OSV (Open Source Ventilator) Project began

”30 minutes I’ll never forget”—How Chris Denney joined the OSV project

”Let’s just make this thing happen”—Why OSV isn’t your everyday engineering project

How Rob Cooke joined the Open Source Ventilator project

“Using Altium 365 is like engineering with cheat codes”—coordinating the OSV project

Chris Denney on how Altium 365 eliminated needless delays

How software like G Suite and Altium 365 are fundamentally changing the future of design

The biggest thing we can do to impact our industry

How the industry is streamlining design by making geography irrelevant

Resources:

Register for AltiumLive 2020: Virtual PCB Summit (Free)

Leigh Gawne on the historic launch of Altium 365

Dugan Karnazes Podcast about OSV

Rob Cooke Podcast OSV collaboration beyond Gerber Files for Fabricators

Innovators Around the Globe Contribute to Coronavirus Intervention

Rising to the Occasion with Altium Designer + Altium 365

Velocity Research Website

Calumet Electronics Website

Worthington Assembly Website

Dugan Karnazes on LinkedIn

Rob Cooke on LinkedIn

Chris Denney on LinkedIn

 

Now you can get the ultimate PCB design productivity with the easiest platform for PCB design. Easily communicate design changes to your team with Altium 365. 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Get ready! AltiumLive 2020 is just around the corner, and Dave Pellerin has joined the roster. Dave is Head of Worldwide Business Development for Infotech/Semiconductor at Amazon Web Services (AWS), and a former Director of Marketing for FPGA Design Products at Altium. Dave has also authored five Prentice Hall books on topics from FPGA programming (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) to design automation. Dave joins us on the OnTrack podcast to bring his uniquely qualified perspective to bear on topics like cloud security and secure collaboration in a disaggregated market, and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) and their applications in the cloud, as well as to give us the details on the upcoming AWS (Amazon Web Services) re:Invent conference.

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

Meet Dave Pellerin and  AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Cloud security and supply chains: recent trends toward secure collaboration environments

How Amazon’s acquisition of Annapurna Labs spurred its interest in secure collaboration 

FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) and their broad applications in the Cloud

”We take care of all that heavy lifting”: AWS IoT Core and advice to users of IoT (Internet of Things) devices

A quick look at Dave’s upcoming contribution to AltiumLive 2020

Why Amazon is seeking to connect with Altium users

Coming Soon... Amazon’s annual AWS re:Invent conference and other exciting upcoming AWS events

Links and Resources:

AltiumLive 2020 FREE Registration Here

Dave Pellerin on LinkedIn

Amazon AWS Website

Amazon Reinvent Conference

AWS Semiconductor/Electronics Webpage

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Altium’s VP of marketing, Lawrence Romine, returns to the OnTrack Podcast to discuss his goals for AltiumLive 2020 and beyond

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

Reintroducing Lawrence Romine, Altium’s VP of Marketing 

Lawrence’s goals for the future of AltiumLive

Why AltiumLive focuses on substantive content and not marketing

”It’s because you gave them a voice...”; Altium’s history of supporting the underdog

The Pros and Cons of going virtual with AltiumLive 

How Eli Hughes and TZero revolutionized brewing by letting brewers ‘hear the beer’

”If you like beer and you like engineering…”: Tin Whiskers Brewing

The privilege of bringing Eric Bogatin and other rock stars of the industry to AltiumLive

Garbage in, garbage out; vetting quality content in a complicated blogosphere 

ENTER Amazon: Altium 365 and the AWS (Amazon Web Services) platform 

”No safety net”: Why AltiumLive does software demonstrations live

Velocity Research’s Open Source Ventilator and other user feedback

How Altium 365’s users seamlessly transitioned to remote work during the quarantine

Links and Resources:

AltiumLive Virtual Summit: Register here for FREE

Lawrence Romine on LinkedIn

AltiumLive Virtual Summit: Meet the Speakers

Previous Episode with Lawrence Romine:

Altium 365: Work from Anywhere, Connect with Anyone

Altium VP, Lawrence Romine on Altium Designer 20

Altium VP on New Library and Data Management Tool Concord Pro

 

Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.