User:Bruce Asai

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

June 20 2008

Brief account of my years as an electronics engineer.

During my 11 years at Hughes Aircraft

• Designed test equipment to provide excitation signals, communication signals and command signals to a set of Intelsat IV system control modules. This equipment also received responses from the various modules and analyzed the signals to verify correct response and accurate data. The test setup was housed in two six foot high equipment bays.

• Designed similar equipment for individual control units of various other communication Satellites.

• Designed High speed data demodulator for Earth Resources Technology satellites. Utilized many new and innovative techniques that were later developed into a separate product line. Equipment also performed highly accurate infrared band edge transition detection from the streaming data.

• Wrote a cost estimating program to estimate the parts and labor cost of new test equipment projects for bidding new work. It turned out to be fairly accurate.

• Designed active filters to dampen perturbations in gyro stabilization control units for spin stabilized satellites. I believe I was the first person to use FETS (Field Effect Transistors) to Implement switched capacitor filters.

• Headed up the system integration and test for the Orbiting Solar Observatory. Designed switched capacitor filters used in the scanning control system.

• Acted as liaison for the engineering task group to the conceptual design team of the Pioneer Venus Radar Mapper. My job was to advise on what the engineering group was capable of delivering. • Designed the control algorithm to keep the radar antenna pointed at the planet Venus as the spacecraft swept through its perihelion and scanned the planets surface.

• Worked with the Air Force representatives to create specifications for various pieces of military avionics equipment they needed built.

• Designed data synchronization and correlation modules for the Space Shuttle Radar and the Technical Data Relay Satellite communication system.

• Designed Spread Spectrum encoders and decoders for mobile communications.

At Northrup Electronics

• Designed test equipment and test procedures for floating ball guidance system hybrid modules. My first designs using Peltier modules for heating and cooling.

At Litton Energy Control.

• Designed sensors for their energy management systems. Temperature sensors, AC and DC current sensors. • Designed test equipment for data acquisition modules. • The design I developed for 4 to 20 ma temperature sensors became the industry standard.

At Design and Engineering Company of America

• Designed very light weight digital light dimming systems for private aircraft with minimum EMI. Still the best according to some pilots. • Built audio amplifiers, built cabin management displays, designed controls to move and position electronics equipment in aircraft. • Rebuilt televisions into custom avionic enclosures • Built a passenger call systems for a business jet. • Created a custom electronic chime module for business jets. • Designed custom environmental controls built into the arm rests of passenger seating. • Built a flight simulation display and breaker panel for certain aspects of pilot training. • Designed and built a pulse plating control system for precision gold plating. • Designed and built an electronically controlled hydraulic transmission shift mechanism. • Built a cryogenic temperature chamber for temperature cycling units under test. • Designed and built long belts of multicolored blinking LED’s for decoration and dressing up furniture in displays. • Designed and built a wood panel with 99 ¾ inch holes containing red incandescent bulbs. The panel was covered with a white translucent plastic cover. The bulbs were controlled by a computer which would cause the panel to display between 1 and 99 red dots in a random pattern. It was used to train children to be able to distinguish large numbers of small objects. • Designed and built the first ever travel alarm clock to have electroluminescent backlighting for an LCD display. Was it ever beautiful. I had the chassis hogged out of a solid block of aluminium. The whole exterior except the display was heavy gold plated with rounded edges and rounded gold plated buttons. It looked like a small gleaming gold brick with a green backlit liquid crystal display in its side.

At Landis and Gyr Powers

• Worked as a system specialist installing, programming and commissioning building automation systems in high rise office buildings, hospitals, and all kinds of other businesses. • Also installed and programmed process control systems. The work was performed in the following cities: Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, Portland Or. San Francisco, San Diego, and Anchorage Alaska.

As a consultant for various organizations in Malibu.

• Assisted in the design of a set of full custom building automation control modules. The system extended over a campus of seven buildings with executive control provided by 2 power Macs. This system controlled all primary and secondary HVAC equipment as well as security systems and fire prevention systems. On/off and dimming control was maintained for over 300 lighting strings. Three communication protocols were employed to accommodate high and low data rate requirements. 32 quarter VGA menu driven wall mounted control panels were distributed around the campus for local control of all environmental systems. The system provided desktop control of chillers and boilers down to coffeepots and stereo systems. • Layed out and designed the PC boards for most of the electronic modules developed. • Designed dimmable lighting systems for incandescent and fluorescent lighting. • Designed all test equipment to commission control modules and systems. • Assisted in the design of a new aircraft cabin management system. • Designed several small pieces of custom test equipment for Bell Helicopters. • Designed custom lightweight audio headsets for helicopter pilots. • Designed a new digital dimming system for halogen seat and table lights for a Gulfstream G5. Reconfigured the existing lighting control interface to accommodate the new system. • Designed and built an automatic control for raising and lowering window shades on a Gulfstream G4 (this had to be fit into less than 1 cubic inch including terminal blocks). • Assisted in the configuration and implementation of a vehicle identification system. • Designed controls for raising and lowering high end overhead movie projectors. • Designed wireless controls to activate many automation functions. • Designed and built automated building window curtain controls for arrays of curtains. • Designed a custom building automation control interface for a Stanley automatic sliding door opener to intercept the Stanley protocol and place the doors under manual or building automation control. • Designed a triple sensor module that measured temperature, humidity and light level for individual rooms and transmitted the data to a data acquisition module. • Designed an 8 plug universal power strip that displayed the current that the strip was supplying. With this you could measure the current draw of anything you plugged into it. For 120V or 240V including LED’s to indicate which voltage was in use. • Designed a custom built thin rack mounted 18 channel professional quality audio mixer with several hard to find features. • Designed a complete computer controlled audio distribution system for music and public address. Occupants controlled speakers in their area. • Designed motorized dimmable “popup” lights that would rise up out of furniture surfaces when commanded. • Designed controls for hydraulically operated glass wall panels. • Designed building automation interfaces into kitchen appliances. • Designed control system for a hot water floor heating system. • Designed the complete HVAC control system for a sound studio. • Designed many independent manual control systems to back up building automation controls with automatic or manual switch over for each individual control actuator in case of computer malfunction. • Designed automation interfaces for a variety of wired and “wireless” motion sensing devices. • Designed a variety of custom time delay and sequencing devices. • Designed a systems of electronic chimes that would discretely announce when an entrance door had been inadvertently “left open”. • Designed a step down transformer that would automatically sense the input voltage and reconfigure the input windings to keep the output voltage constant. • Designed a very hi fidelity compact audio power amp that could be attached to the back of a speaker. This allowed elimination of the often expensive speaker wires. • Designed a gate opener for vehicles that automatically sent an open signal when the car got near the gate. • Designed a high current programmable pulse-on-top-of-voltage charger with four outputs for charging battery cells at maximum rate. • Currently working on a digital control interface for a motorized variac used for sound studio lighting control. This will incorporate feedback derived from the variac output voltage scaled to represent light output level linearized in a lookup table in the microprocessor.