I met Vincent Himpe—a Senior Staff Engineer at STMicroelectronics—a few years ago at the Emebdded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA. It took all of about 5 minutes to learn that he was an engineer with a lot on his mind. Himpe described his work on hard disk drives, sketched a few circuits on a piece of paper, and even mentioned a few ideas for books. (Yes, that’s books—plural.) Where does such a productive engineer get so many ideas and all that energy? I wondered after we parted. I didn’t get to ask him before the conference ended.
Fortunately, Himpe recently contacted me, so I took the opportunity to get more insight into the life of such a multitalented engineer. I sent him a few questions via email, and he kindly replied. We have some insight into where he does a lot of creating, problem solving, programming, and writing.
When Himpe isn’t working on advanced controller devices for hard disk drives at STMicro, he’s writing books, tackling personal design projects, and repairing surplus electronic electronic equipment in two-bench workspace in San Jose.
My short interview with Himpe appears after the following two photos of his San Jose-based workspace.
Vincent Himpe’s workbench for hardware development
Himpe’s workbench for programming
C. J.: What are you working these days?
VINCENT: I make the reference designs and the development system for a hard disk mechatronic interface chip. This chip spins the 3 phase motor, does the head positioning including velocity control for the seek algorithms, shock sensing (to park the heads when freefall or shock is detected), provides power to all other parts (it’s got 4 switching regulators onboard). In case of unexpected power loss, we protect the data by retracting the heads. We recycle the mechanical energy in the spinning platters by using the motor as generator. This gives us a few seconds of power where we can gracefully shutdown the drive, preventing disasters.
C. J.: What sorts of projects do you work on at these two workstations? Work-related projects? Personal projects?
VINCENT: Personal projects. I have a number of books published. Some of the hardware for those was developed there.
C. J.: Can you tell us a bit about the equipment at your hardware workstation? What do you use most frequently?
VINCENT: This is almost all salvaged equipment that was half functioning or broken. Some machines were repaired by combining two broken ones. I scout local surplus stores and eBay for damaged equipment. And once in a while you get lucky. There was a local company moving to a new building. They had ceased hardware development a couple of years ago and only do IP blocks now. They had a “yard sale.” That’s where I picked up my logic analyzer and my favorite scope: an Agilent mso7104: 4 analog and 16 digital channels 1GHz bandwidth with deep memory and all the protocols enabled.
C. J.: It looks like you’re working on something at the hardware bench. On the shelf is some equipment with red wires.
VINCENT: Those are three bench power supplies e3410 from Agilent. Next to it are three 34401 multimeters, also Agilent. I’m a bit of an Agilent fan. The fact that you can easily get full-service manuals that include schematics, calibration and troubleshooting procedures makes it ideal to fix these machines. That’s not the case with many other brands. Plus, they are built to last.
C. J.: What’s the piece of equipment directly under the magnifier/lamp?
VINCENT: Looks like a roll of desoldering wick. I was working on the ringlight. You can see a circular PCB just above it. Thirty-six white LEDs driven by a current-controlled boost pump with PWM. The halogen light bulbs in my Mantis burn out too easily. So I will replace them with this ringlight.
C. J.: How many solder stations do you have at your hardware station?
VINCENT: About seven. I have a Microtouch for precision work, SMD tweezers to remove passives, a hot air pencil, two WSP80s with different tips (so I don’t have to switch tip continuously while working), and a regular desoldering station with a vacuum pump. These are all surplus and/or repaired machines.
C. J.: What is board you’re working with at your software station?
VINCENT: That is a controller board for a UV exposure unit to make PCBs. It’s got an ATmega328 and LCD display. The board does double duty as pizza oven reflow controller. Just install two thermocouple interface chips and change software.
