DAVE’S BUSINESS JOURNAL  Last Updated:   03/26/06 07:50 AM

This feature is a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a consulting engineer.  It chronicles the activities and process to "keep the IN-BOX" full.  Click here to see view Dave's IN-BOX.   In the Business Journal, Dave records progress on current consulting projects; describes work on new inventions; and discusses plans for additions to his websites.

Chronicle

November 2003 The pain of the loss of Bob the Beagle is still fresh.  It was clear that my other Beagle, Betty missing Bob a lot.   She looked for him everywhere and started sleeping on Bob’s favorite pillow.   Something she never did before.  The wife and I did a lot of sole searching and decided that for the sake of Betty, we should get another Beagle puppy.  After a week or so of searching over a three state area, we found a suitable puppy from a local breeder.  On November 2nd we adopted a 10 week old male puppy.  We named him Billy Bob Beagle, Billy for short.  At first Betty didn’t know what to make of this intruder but in a few short weeks, she warmed up to him.  They now spend hours romping and playing together in the back yard.  Billy still keeps us up at night.   We have been taking him out to pee and poop every few hours.  But, now that he has figured out how to use the two pet doors, we hope that he will start letting himself out.  Thanksgiving was pleasant but the day did bring back many fresh memories of old Bob the Beagle.  It was a holiday that he especially enjoyed.  He loved the extra attention he would get from friends and relatives and the smells of food being cooked would keep him begging for scraps and handouts.  Billy Beagle’s puppy play does help ease some of the pain I still miss my Bobby Beagle.    We both have waves of profound sadness.   They say you never get over the loss of a child, I am beginning to believe this is true of a pet that was treated as a child and loved so deeply.

I built another batch of  Faraday switches.  I have now almost reached the point where I have paid for my initial investment in this second generation switch design.  My wife had a job interview.  This was the first one in about a year or so.  I sure hope it leads to a real job.  I will miss her during the day but the added income will be very good indeed.  My New Jersey client has finally made a decision on the soap mixing control system they want.  It will take me a few days, but we should finally get all the documents ready to put the new system into production.   I also reviewed their patent application for this product.  I’m listed as a co-inventor.  I started working on a small project for a woman in California, who has one of those “better mousetrap” ideas for an existing product.  Say, does anyone really read this stuff?   Send me an email if you read this.

October  2003 I finished reviewing a patent application for a ground status monitoring system I designed for a company in Florida.   I was listed as a co-inventor on the application.  It is always nice to have another patent to list on my credentials.  I have lost count.  I think this will make it patent number 8 or 9. I started working on some tests for a company developing some infrared light sources and matching infrared imaging devices for the medical industry.  This combination allows subsurface features of the human body to be viewed on a video screen, without the use of x-rays.  It was an interesting concept and I hope to get some more business from this new start-up company.

We took Bob the Beagle back to the vet around the first part of the month.  Bob was having some severe pain in his back, making it hard for him to move around.  We had Bob on steroids for several months, which helped, but the symptoms kept coming back. Constant use of steroids at his 7 years of age was not advised, since they tend to damage other organs.   We finally took Bob to a neurological specialist who discovered that the pain was caused by a herniated disk in Bob’s neck, compressing his spinal cord.  We had only two choices for Bob.  We could have him put to sleep to end his suffering or we could opt for surgery.  We scheduled surgery that same day.  At age 7 we felt that Bob still had many more years of life left in him and we wanted that life to be as normal as possible.  According to the surgeon, the operation went well.  The surgeon kept us informed as to Bob’s progress for the first critical days of recovery following surgery, but after a few days, the progress reports didn’t come or were delivered to us third hand by clinic personnel and only after several calls to the clinic.   The typical recovery time for the kind of delicate surgery that Bob had was 5 days.   It was important for the dog to be kept very still, allowing the swelling to go down and the bones in the spine to begin fusing.  We were getting concerned, since the vet was not giving us specific medical information as to why they were keeping Bob longer than normal.  They made some vague comments about balancing his pain control medication and wanting to be sure he was pooping properly.  But, after 8 full days at the clinic, the vet finally said that Bob was ready to come home.  His sister Betty was really missing Bob and my wife and I were elated to have him home again, even if it meant a long and difficult recovery process.  When we saw Bob at the clinic before the trip home he looked terrible.  The spark in his eyes was gone.  He could barely move.  The vet said that the recovery process would be slow but that within a few weeks we should see a dramatic improvement.  The wife and I planned to take turns, sleeping next to Bob in the living room, so we could more easily take him out to pee and poop through the front door and out onto the front lawn.  He was way too unsteady to go up and down the stairs to and from the back yard.  About six hours after a nice home cooked meal, Bob started vomiting.  He was also drinking massive amounts of water.  We expected him to be thirsty, which was caused by the steroids, but we didn’t expect the vomiting.  Our first attempts to contact the surgeon were unsuccessful.  When we finally did reach him, he just wanted us to keep the vomiting under control and said that perhaps some Kaopectate might relieve the symptoms.  A few teaspoons of the stuff fed to Bob did seem to stop the vomiting and Bob slept most of the night.  The next morning Bob ate a little but he just didn’t have much strength.  He continued sleeping, which we thought was a good sign.  The vomiting started again late in the afternoon.  We kept feeding him ice cubes, to try to keep him hydrated, but by early evening it was clear that it was time to take him back to the clinic.  By the end of the hour-long drive to the clinic, Bob started vomiting non-stop.  The animal ER vet said he had a high fever and was most likely dehydrated by the vomiting.  He also had rapid breathing.   They started an IV and put him on pure oxygen.  They said that they would know more after some x-rays and blood tests.  They suggested that we drive home and plan on coming back the next morning.  At 11:30 that night we got the call that would change our lives.  Bob had gone into cardiac arrest and could not be revived.  Our little boy Beagle was dead.  My wife and I were devastated.  We had gone from the joy of having him home with us to the devastation of him being dead in only 36 hours.   Since he was quickly cremated, we will never know what really happened to him.   I believe that the surgery, the long recovery time in a strange place, was just too much stress for him to handle.  I think it triggered something bad in his digestive tract.  The clinic made some vague comments about some “shadows” in his gut on some of the last x-rays taken.  I do think that the clinic was hiding something from us, but we will never know.  It was clear that he should have been kept at the clinic for a few more days.  Maybe they would have been able to take action more quickly to save his life.

My wife created Remembering Bob.  It was good therapy for her.  I hear her crying when she thinks she is out of ear-shot.   Betty becomes very concerned and tries to comfort her by licking away the tears.    Bob was my constant companion during those long lonely nights when the wife was traveling a lot.  He also kept me in reasonable health by walking with me on some of the 3000 or so walks we took in those 7 years.   Bob loved to take in the smells along the way.  Our walks were the highlight of his day.  Our walks around the neighborhood became so frequent and routine that Bob became a local celebrity.  Many people would call out, “hi Bob” as we walked by.  He loved being petted by the local kids.   Since my wife and I never had children, our dogs were our “kids.”  We were just not prepared for the sudden loss of Bob.    He was truly part of our little family and will be missed terribly.  I found it difficult to work on consulting projects over the next several days.  I just couldn’t concentrate on things.   In time, the pain will diminish.  Somehow, life must go on

September 2003 My wife took a week off and drove to Waco Texas with her sister.  They visited Jan’s mother who lives there.  I had the house to myself.  I was glad to have the two dogs for company.  My big house can get too quiet at times.  I worked briefly on a product that monitored the level of solar energy in gardens.  The invention was designed to help gardeners determine the amount of sunshine at any garden location.  I’m not sure of the value of such an invention since many computer programs exist that will make such calculations for you.  Some will even plot the shadows of trees and objects over the course of the year. The wife and I started to sell some electronic surplus stuff on eBay.  I have a basement full of stuff I will never use.   I might as well get some money by sell it than send it off to the landfill.  I sold some more Faraday switches.   Some went to a company putting together a nice “musical chair” game at a children’s museum.  This was certainly one of the more usual applications. The switches detected when someone was sitting in one of the wooden chairs.  I built some more turbidity sensors for my New Jersey client.  I think we are now close to a final design to their soap solution concentration monitoring system.  I would sure like to get this product into production.  Since they need only about 1,500 units I think I can stuff the boards by hand.

August 2003 I managed to sell a few more Faraday Switches this month.  I hope this is a trend.  I can use the money.  I also built a custom short range Opacity monitor.  This device produces a voltage that is inversely proportional to the clarity of air between a light source and a light detector.  As the air becomes more smoky or dusty, the signal drops.  This measurement is often used in the smoke stacks of power plants.  The company indicated that more of these units might be needed in the future.  I worked out a neat circuit to modulate the light source so its light output remains fixed.  Modulation is important in some installations where extra ambient light from the environment will be collected.

July 2003 This summer is going by way too fast.   After a few frantic weeks of work, things seem now to be slowing down. The wife and I decided to start a new website (www.discoveraudiobooks.com).   I may take years for the site to be found by the search engines.  Our goal is to make the site the largest source of audio books on the Internet.    I might do some more work for the American Border Patrol.  They would love for me to develop a light beam sensor, which could detect humans crossing a boarder fence line, over two miles long.  Some commercial devices do exist but are rather expensive.  Unlike the simple geophone human foot traffic sensor I designed for them, this project will take a lot more mechanical hardware and some carefully designed, low noise circuits.  The third generation soap mixing control circuit I designed for a company in New Jersey may finally go into production soon.  I think the wife and I will build the first 1,200 circuit boards for them.   We can use the extra money.   I had a meeting with an engineer who wanted my help in starting an engineering service company.  He wanted to use my contacts to generate some consulting contracts, which would be diverted to India.   I told him I would not help him put more engineers out of work.  I wonder how much of this is going on elsewhere?  No wonder our economy is in decline when more and more technical jobs are being shipped overseas.

June 2003 I drove to an electronic surplus store in Denver the other day, to pick up some bits and pieces.  I was shocked to discover that after 27 years, they had to close their doors.  That leaves just one store in the entire Denver/Boulder metro area that still sells electronic parts.  Radio Shack has still sells some stuff, but as time goes on, their shelves are being filled with more telephone and audio systems than electronic hobby stuff.  I think it is more than just a sign of bad economic times.  People just don’t build and experiment with their own electronic circuits any more.  The US invented the transistor, the integrated circuit and the personal computer.  But, now it seems that we no longer are interested in inventing new stuff.  Magazines focused on electronics are dieing.  Popular Electronics was one of the latest to cease publication.  Many of the trade journals I get, such as EDN and Electronic Design, are getting thinner and thinner.  This all makes me wonder just how much longer I can make a living in the electronic industry.  I finished building the first new 50 Faraday Switch modules.  I sure hope I can sell some, so I can recover my investment.  I sold one unit to a guy working with people suffering from ALS or Lew Geriges’s disease.   By connecting a metal ring to the user’s finger and a nearby metal ring to the capacitance input of the Faraday Switch, the person can move just one finger to control a computerized device.  Other devices, such as mechanical switches, have not been very successful.

May 2003 May was a busy month.  I completed some more limited production and worked on new designs for both my soap mixing system and ground status monitor clients. The redesign of the next generation Faraday Switch circuit is complete.  As this month ends, the pc board layout is in the final stage.  I hope to have new units ready for sale by mid-June.  My wife sells on eBay and has a Paypal account through which she can accept credit card payments.  We are considering setting it up so that we can accept credit card payment for Faraday Switches too.  Many people have asked for that method of payment. The work of the American Border Patrol was featured on CNN on May 17th.  My contact there emailed me a link to a video clip of the story.  My wife is wearing the hat of "bill collector" again.  In my 20+ years of consulting, most of my clients pay on a timely basis, but a client on east coast has not yet paid for work completed in January.  The excuses keep mounting.

April 2003 I conducted some probono design work for the American Border Patrol, a not-for-profit organization.  I helped them with some new human motion sensors that will be placed along the Mexico/Arizona border.  Millions of illegals make it into the US from Mexico.  The Border Patrol wants to plug that hole with some new low cost sensors.  I hope to also work with the Border Patrol with some long range motion sensors using some optical techniques. I helped a student from Purdue University design a circuit that monitored the volume of fluid dispensed from a syringe.    The circuit measured the fluid using a capacitance change method.  I will clean up the circuit and post it on the Discover Circuits site.  I built yet another type of prototype for my soap mixing system client and got the ground status monitor product into limited production.  There is still more work to be done if these products are to be manufactured in large quantities. I continue to sell some Faraday Switches.  I took some time to redesign the circuit.  I now have a circuit that has more features and can be powered by a lithium battery for 10 years.

January through March 2003 2003 started out in the usual way . . . consulting work during the weeks leading up to Christmas and all the way through the first part of the new year was slow.  Companies just don’t seem to want to do much during these times of the year.  On January 8th, I had a major setback.  While out walking my two Beagle dogs on an unusually warm winter day, I slipped on some unexpected ice and shattered my left wrist.    The whole world seemed to come to a stop for me.  For the first time in my life I found myself dependent on others to make it through the day.  My wife had to help me dress and drive me to several hospital and doctor visits.  Thank God for her support.  I went through two rounds of surgery.  The first one to place a steel plate in my wrist and the second to remove the plate after 10 weeks.  For the first two weeks I was pretty much helpless.  More pain than I have ever experienced.  Fortunately, through my network of other consultants, I was able to farm out some critical projects.  Made arrangement for the clients to pay them directly.  It was certainly income lost, but better to lose money than clients.   Then, in spite of some pain and a very stiff wrist, I managed to work on some design and construction projects.  However, income for the first quarter of 2003 will be at an all-time low.  In spite of a good health insurance plan, the bills for the broken wrist will eat up much of the income.

December 2002 I continued to work on both the soap mixing control system and the ground status monitor projects.  I built prototypes for both of these products but now I need to prepare them for mass production.  This work will continue well into 2003.  I finished designing a calibration wand for a firearm training system.  The wand helps align a TV camera with a large projection screen.  The TV system detects laser beams fired from various weapons.  The wand contains an infrared source that is easily detected by the camera.  Once adjustments are made, a spot of laser light striking the screen is accurate to about ¼ of an inch on a big 10 foot by 8 foot screen.    The system is used to train law enforcement personnel.   I am starting to search in Internet for new circuits so I can post their links on Discover Circuits.

October through November 2002 November started slow but built to a fever pitch.  For a few weeks I was swamped with work.  I built a prototype for a new soap mixing control system and a prototype for a power line ground status monitor.  Both projects contained some real packaging challenges. I continued to sell a few more Faraday Switches.  I sold one modified unit to a guy in Canada.  He used it to make a “hands free” toilet flushing system.  This was perhaps the most unusual application for one of my switches.  The idea was to flush the toilet without touching anything.   A simple wave of ones hand over a metal plate behind the toilet would activate a system that pulled the flush lever.  Another Faraday unit went to operate a lighting system in a New Jersey museum.  Another person called and wanted to use a switch to detect when water flowed into a plastic pipe.  But, although the switch would indeed detect the water, the film of water that forms would keep the switch activated for a long period after the majority of the water flowed through.

October started out fairly slow.   Other than a tiny project that supports a soap mixing system for a company in New Jersey, I have little work scheduled.  The fall and winter seasons are usually slower than the rest of the year but I was really hoping to have some work lined up by now.  I got a call from a company needing some help with a ground resistance monitor for home electrical systems.  I must confess.  I never gave much thought to the quality of the earth ground connection at my home.   But, in lightning prone areas, a low ground resistance is a must.  Maybe this effort will lead to some new products.

I have yet to be paid by the company who hired me to look into ways to measure the volume of beer in a keg.  I spend days putting together a detailed technical report, including some patent search results.  They really have no excuse for not paying me the $720 invoice.  A guy wanting to keep a low power LED powered day and night from a photovoltaic panel also stiffed me for $50 worth of consulting fees.  I’m thinking about posting a new section called “Dave’s Hall of Shame” on my website.  There I could list those people and companies who owe me money. I’ve started working on some illustrations for my Faraday Switches.  I hope to show how these devices can be used in a variety of applications.

August through September 2002 July, August and September were busy months.  At times, I had so many projects at various stages of completion that I was not sure I would ever be able to finish them all in a reasonable timeframe.  Now things are winding down and I find myself wishing I had some work scheduled going into the fall season. I managed to sell a few more Faraday Switch modules.  Three were used in behavioral studies with mice.  I guess they are using the switches to detect when a mouse touches a small metal button.  They told me that they tried mechanical switches without much success but the capacitance sensing technique, used in the Faraday Switches, works like a charm.  Another Faraday Switch was used in a mousetrap application.   Yet another went to an experimental aircraft museum in Wisconsin.  I think I should take some time and expand my line of available hardware that I could sell.  I think a small remote touch sensor and a couple of supporting interface modules might be sold.

A dilemma for any consultant is weighing the pros and cons of whether or not to farm out some of the project.  After designing a circuit board for a client I sought to find a firm to stuff the board.  I was unsuccessful at finding a local circuit board stuffer who could build about 1,500 simple electronic boards at a reasonable price.  So I decided to take on the project myself.  I setup a small production line in my basement and cranked out about 500 boards.  I’m hoping to get an order for 1,000 more.  That steady income would sure help my cash flow situation. I worked briefly on a security project to send data through a sealed steel container.  After some experiments, an ultrasonic method seemed to have the best characteristics.  This kind of work made me feel good, since I know it will help make my country safer.  I frantic call from one of my old clients forced me to review some patent application pages.  It would be nice to have another patent to add to my list.  This one would be signed over to a major tire manufacturer.   It involves ways to communicate with a passive RFID tag inside a rubber tire.  You would not believe just how hard it is to maintain communications with such a tag.  Rubber tires are full of steel belts and partly conductive rubber that make it difficult to transfer power and information to a tag. A query from a major security badge company gave me some ideas about some new flashing LED products.

Other small projects included a beer keg level indicator, a beer flow meter, an, ADD aiding device, a patent application support for a major tire company, laser modules for firearm training and ultrasonic communications through steel.  Traffic to my Discover Circuits site continues to grow.   We should easily break the 3,000 visitors per day mark by the end of September.  I need to mine the Internet for some more circuits and clean up some of my own to add to the list.   There seems to be some interest in using a xenon flash tube as a source of modulated light.  I think I can come up with a circuit to prove that it can be done.   This kind of light source might be ideal for sending command signals over a long distance.  It would be like a VCR remote with a possible range of several miles.

July  2002 I was looking for information on solar energy the other day and found that most of the information is scattered all over the Internet.  The frustration I was having when searching reminded me of the feelings I had when I was looking for electronic schematics.  That frustration led to the creation of the “Discover Circuits” site.  I decided to launch a new website called “Discover Solar Energy”.   It will act as a launching pad for people looking for specific information on solar energy.  The site will function in much the same way as the Discover Circuits website.  It will have hundreds of specific categories under which the user will find hot links to specific URLs on that particular topic.  It may take a few years, but my goal is to make this site as popular at the Discover Circuits site.  I should then be able to justify selling banner ads.  My wife already made a nice front-page logo for the new site. With the automatic association with my other three sites, I hope that the site traffic will quickly build.   I do believe that interest in solar energy will increase in the coming years. The traffic to the Discover Circuits site is continuing to build.  Our peak so far has been about 15,000 hits on one day.  We now have over 6,000 schematics in the collection.  I feel that we have only scratched the surface and I’m confident that we should be able to mine the Internet for more circuits.  I think we are on track for being able to boast by the end of the year that the site has over 10,000 circuits.  My wife and I are now researching banner ads, that could be sold on both the Discover Circuits and the Imagineering Magazine websites.  I don’t want to clutter up the sites too much but we need to somehow recoup the time we invested in these sites.

June 2002 It has been a slow month.  My wife and I spent many hours completing some badly needed landscaping in our back yard.  The smoke from the Colorado forest fires and the hot days kept our efforts restricted to the early morning hours and the late evening. I finished the project for the New Jersey company.  I built a prototype, generated a detailed material list, a detailed schematic and got some quotes for making the completed units for them. They have not yet decided if they are going to make the circuit themselves or have someone else make it.  Based on my quotes, it is clear that fewer and fewer companies want to build only a thousand or less of some electronic circuit.

May 2002 I got a call from another potential client in New Jersey.  He wants me to help his company with some motor control problems.  He said he found my name from a Google search using the key words: electronics, consulting and engineers.  I was amazed to discover that when I duplicated his search on Google, my name came up 3rd, 4th and 5th on a list of 98,000.  It looks like the search engines are finding me. I got a call from a possible client in London.  He has an interesting product idea for cell phones.  It would be an interesting project that would force me to be very creative in the areas of electro-optics.  I hope he has the money for such an effort.   It will not be a cheap project.

March through April 2002 My wife Jan and I continue to add more circuit schematics to the Discover Circuits site.   This site is now overtaking the Imagineering site in traffic.  I’d like to have about 10,000 circuit schematics listed by the end of the year.  I want the Discover Circuits site to become the one place that everyone goes to when looking for circuits.  With about 1,500 circuits, it already is the largest collection of schematics on the entire Internet. I started working on another small project to document a laser system used in a firearm training system.  Since most of the text was poorly translated from Hebrew, it has been a real challenge trying to figure out some of the material.  The design can sure use some changes. One my associates here in Colorado emailed me and said he tried one of my electric field disturbance monitor circuits.  He said he found it to be very sensitive.  He is interested in low power motion sensors for the military.  The circuit could be used to detect human movement inside a wood structure, by placing it on one of the outside walls. I shipped the optical fiber indicator box to Florida.  They liked it.  It is not certain they will want me to design the production version of the prototype or not.  Time will tell. I picked up a small consulting job from a company in Florida.  They want me to design an active fiber optic indicator.  The device will let a service technician know if an optical fiber has infrared light coming from it and which of the major wavelengths used are present.  This should keep me busy for about a week or two.  The challenge will be to find some cheap InGaAs photo diodes.   Unlike standard silicon parts, these are somewhat new semiconductors and only a few companies worldwide make them.  Once a source is found, the rest of the project should progress quickly.

My wife Jan and I worked hard at adding more material to the Discover Circuits and the Imagineeringezine websites.  In addition to adding more circuit schematics we added some useful links.  We were pleased to see that many other websites have their own collection of links that included our sites.

I’ve been thinking about ways I could take advantage of the increased traffic to the websites.  I hate to clutter up the site with a lot of banner ads but such ads would offset the monthly out of pocket expenses the sites demand.  I’d love to develop a relationship with integrated circuit houses like National Semiconductor or Linear Technology, to develop some nice application notes for some of their parts.  Perhaps I could increase my return on the invested time by also publishing some of the circuits in magazines like Electronic Design and EDN.  It has been years since I had a circuit published.

I posted some questions on five different Google newsgroups.   There is no faster way to boost traffic to the websites than spreading my URL around in some newsgroups.  The response to the questions was not terrific but I did see a spike in the traffic to the sites.  The responses I got for asking if a molecular sieve could work on Mars for generating breathable air were interesting.  It seems that others also had the same idea.  I was referred to some research done to also extract water from the thin atmosphere of Mars using a micro-sieve.  It looks like with less than 100 watts of electrical power, one could generate about one liter of water per day.  I think with some carefully designed energy recovery schemes the efficiency might be boosted to several liters of water per day, while drawing only 100 watts.  That doesn’t sound like much but if such a device were to be placed on Mars a couple of years ahead of a human mission, it could generate and store lots of water for humans to drink and it could also be processed into rocket fuel for the return trip.

I experimented with a laser module from Radio Shack.  Although cheaper laser pointers can be found, Radio Shack is a convenient place to shop for most people.   These visible red lasers are powered by 3 volts and produce a nice tight spot of visible red light.  The light is a little on the weak side, only about 1 milliwatt, so it is not a bright as some nicer 3mw laser pointers I have seen.  But, for many applications, it will do the job.  Experiments indicate that the light can be turned on and off with 100 microsecond pulses.  This is fast enough for many applications that require a low pulse rate.  I started designing some circuits using this laser.  A long-range through-beam security alarm system could be designed with a range of perhaps 1000 feet.  The alarm would be turned on when the beam was broken.  I like the idea of using a retro-reflective technique, so all the electronics is at one end.  Only a corner cube is needed at the other end.  Three 12” x 12” glass mirror tiles would work great as a long range corner cube reflector.  I built one of these years ago and was able to see it from miles away.

An email question from a kid, asking about his science project triggered a thought.  Just how easy is it to use a piezoelectric device to sense water flowing in a metal pipe?  I quickly attached a piezoelectric device to an old cable clamp and mounted it to a water pipe near my workbench.  I then connected it to my oscilloscope.  I asked my wife to flush a few toilets and run some faucets, while I monitored the scope.  I had no problem seeing the rushing water.  But, when she banged on the pipe two floors up from my basement lab, the signal was very strong.  I seem to remember someone suggesting using water pipes as a way to connect users to the Internet.  Wow, maybe one could use water pipes as a conduit for computer data.  I’ll have to find some high frequency piezoelectric wafers and see what can be done.  It is at least worth a few more new circuit schematics to post on the websites.  Perhaps a magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) technique could also work.   Such a transducer could pump a lot of acoustic energy into the water column.

February through March 2002 After reviewing the Imagineering website statistics, I was thrilled to learn that the visitor traffic is now over 1000 per day.  It has been some time since I made any changes to the site.  To maintain a steady flow of visitors, I decided to add more material and clean up some of the pages.  I added 24 more circuit schematics and my wife and I cleaned up many of the graphs on the Optical Through the Air Communications Handbook.  I need to post three new chapters to the book.  I have plenty of circuits that could be included to chapters on laser transmitters, laser receivers and maybe I could add a chapter that included some miscellaneous electro-optic circuits.  I also need to launch a new section on energy.  I started collecting information on energy storage methods.  I really like the idea of using super capacitors to store electrical energy, instead of fuel cells or storage batteries.  If the energy density of super capacitors can be improved, they would be a more practical method to store electricity.  I started planning some simple circuits that could demonstrate a system using photovoltaic solar cells and super capacitors.  Perhaps an array of super bright yellow LEDs could be wired as a warning light, turned on only at night, drawing power from some super caps, that would be charged by the sun during the day.  Without any batteries, the system should operate for about 10 years. Started to experiment with some long-range control circuits, using xenon flash lamp light sources.  These may be cheaper solutions to simple on and off controls instead of RF methods.  The range could be extended to miles.  I outlined some experiments I’d like to perform to see if I could easily modulate the current through the lamp, thus producing data bursts.  Even a small lamp could launch about 1000 watts of useable light, rich in infrared wavelengths.  My wife and I started looking for a new house. We would love to find a large home in the west-central part of Denver.  I, of course, have dreams about turning part of the home into a showcase for new technologies.  I can imagine a neat high-speed communications system using optical fibers. As an example, a roof mounted color TV could allow us to see what the weather was like and give us a nice shot of a Colorado sunset.

October 2001 through February 2002 Worked almost full time on a consulting project in Boulder, Colorado.  The project was to demonstrate ways to transfer electrical power to a pressure, temperature and ID circuit, mounted inside a passenger car tire.  The sponsors for the work were Goodyear and Siemens.   This turned out to be a lot more difficult of a task.  Power needed to be sent to the tag inside the tire continuously.  Data needed to be received from the tire tag, without any interruptions, regardless of tire position and speed.   Preliminary prototypes were built and tested.  The next task is to transfer the discrete prototype circuits into a custom integrated circuit, which can survive the harsh tire environment.

October through November 2001 Submitted a proposal to a Littleton Colorado company.   I would design a firearm training system to be used by law enforcement agencies.  The system would use custom modulated lasers and laser light detectors in conjunction with a CCD camera.   The system would help train law officers when and when not to fire their weapons.  Video images are projected onto a screen.  The light from the laser equipped weapons are fired at the screen.  An accuracy of about one centimeter will be needed.

September 2001 Boy was I glued to the TV like millions of other Americans.  Watching the terrorist events unfold was spell bounding.  I started imagining what new technologies would be needed for a war economy.

August 2001 Added a capacitance proximity switch section to the Imagineeringezine website. Reviewed the list of new products and service ideas,  trying to figure out other ways to supplement the consulting income.

March through June 2001 I worked nearly full time on a consulting project in Boulder, Colorado.  The project was to design a lithium ion battery charger for an implanted hearing aid.  To avoid any direct connection to the implanted device, a magnetic induction technique was used to supply the power needed to charge the hearing aid battery.  Two coils, one inside and one outside the skull were used to send and receive power.  Also designed an inductive coupled communications device for the hearing aid.  The key fob style box looked like an automotive keyless entry device.   The device was used to send control commands to the hearing aid.  The complete system is now in clinical trials.

November through February 2001 Worked as an employee for a company in Boulder, Colorado.  They made small uninterruptable power supplies for computers.   The UPS was unique in that the whole system, including batteries, slipped into a standard 3 ½ inch drive bay.  The Company went out of business and laid I was off in February 2001.