LOCATION:
Chandler, AZ
MEMBER STATUS:
Dean has been a subscriber for about 20 years.
TECH INTERESTS:
Dean enjoys designing and building home automation systems. His current system’s functions include: security system monitoring, irrigation control, water leak detection, temperature and electrical usage monitoring, fire detection, access control, weather and water usage monitoring, solar hot water system control, and security video recording.
MOST RECENT EMBEDDED TECH ACQUISITION:
A Microchip Technology debugger.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Dean is currently designing a hybrid solar power system to power his home automation system. “The power system will use a processor-controlled dual-input power converter design to harvest the maximum energy possible from the photovoltaic cells and then augment that with utility power as necessary to support the load,” he explained. “The system will be a hybrid between an on-grid and an off-grid system. The hybrid approach was chosen to avoid the regulatory issues with an on-grid system and the cost of batteries in an off-grid system.”
THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF EMBEDDED TECH:
“As more and more capability is being made available to the embedded world, the design opportunities are endless. I particularly find it exciting that network connectivity can now be so easily added to an embedded system so various embedded systems can communicate with each other and with the outside world via the Internet. I am concerned that so many of the new embedded parts are designed with extremely fine pitch leads, which makes DIY assembly with hand soldering a challenge,” he said.
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