Episodes
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Inspire and Educate through Open-Source Hardware Products with Lukas Henkel
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Lukas Henkel, our guest in this episode was already into electronic engineering at age 10.
He will share with us what made him interested in designing electronics, some details about the development of his Open-source laptop project, and will even give us a sneak peek of the actual design development on Altium Designer.
You don’t want to miss this! Watch through the end and be sure to check the additional resources below.
Get Your First Month of Altium Designer® for FREE
Episode Highlights:
-
Lukassz Lawrocki, Technical Marketing Manager at Altium makes a special appearance to explain Altium’s new initiative that encourages and supports electrical engineers to create open-source projects
-
The open source Laptop project by Lukas Henkel is the first project to be supported by this new initiative
-
Introduction to Lukas Henkel
-
Lukas talks about his background and his first electronic project at age 10
-
Robert Feranec and the Altium OnTrack Podcast are just a couple of Lukas’s inspirations for discovering his interest in electronics and PCB design
-
Lukas chose a laptop for his open-source project because of its composition—a variety of components working together
-
Electrical vs mechanical, which one did Lukas find more challenging?
-
The laptop project will have a full aluminum body, which is a cheaper choice for producing prototypes in a smaller volume
-
Lukas talks about why the flex part of the enclosure is one of the challenging parts of his project
-
While there are commercial and open-source tools to help with high-speed signal optimization, complex optimization problems are best solved through a manual process — comparing solutions and comparing the impact of each domain
-
Lukas shares his transition from working with Semikron to his own company, OV Tech
-
Zach and Lukas exchange experiences in running their companies - challenges, projects, and clients
-
Lukas encourages everyone who is interested to learn more about his open-source laptop to follow him on LinkedIn for development updates
-
Design Demonstration via Altium designer
-
Watch for Lukas's next project, the Open Source Smartwatch
Links and Resources:
- Connect with Lukas Henkel via LinkedIn
- Subscribe to Robert Feranec Youtube Channel
- Watch all previous Altium OnTrack Podcast episodes
- Watch related episodes:
Read: Open Source Hardware & PCB Projects in Altium Designer
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
The Electronics Behind a Haunting Attraction
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
In this episode, a returning guest Gabriel Goldstein shares the electronics behind the thrills in escape rooms. He also generously gives some valuable advice on finding your niche and starting your own electronics business.
Gabriel was the former owner of Anidea Engineering and Escape Room Tech. Listen to this episode and be inspired by how he married two industries together and become the master of this very unique niche.
- Gabriel’s background, he is the former owner of Anidea Engineering and Escape Room Tech
- The business of producing low-volume products - his first big project is an ARM9 with 16 mb of RAM, a PDA style learning device
- The fascinating technology in the escape room includes off-the-shelf surveillance cameras, keyboards, and maglocks. Gabriel describes the technology behind the “magic doors”
- They use RFID and developed their RS45-based networking system
- A successful escape room requires an extreme collaboration of multiple skill sets that include electronics guys, theater guys, and game theory team just to name the least
- The escape room industry is a marriage of electronics and haunt industry
- Creating a small, showpiece project could be a gateway to a PCB design career
- Software engineers have GitHub, while PCB designers have Arduino and Raspberry Pi
- Gabriel wrote blogs to educate his customers about the business of producing products that sell
- He became Mr. Networker hanging out at the Angel Forum groups and the venture capital groups
- For about 6 years he was out there in the community to help out, give back and help build a business
- He recommends a book from Martin Gerber – Awakening the Entrepreneur Within
- “If you're going to take off the engineering hat and try to turn this into a business, please learn how to run a business because it's a completely different skill set”
- Ending the conversation with a little anecdote from Gabriel, an inspiration to be in the business mindset and going for the American Dream
Resources:
Connect with Gabriel Goldstein on LinkedIn
Visit Escape Room Techs website
Read Martin Gerber’s Awakening the Entrepreneur Within
Watch the previous episode with Gabriel Goldstein - How to Build a New Data Management System
Read Gabriel Goldstein’s Blog Articles on LinkedIn
Connect with Zach on LinkedIn