#620 – Engineering Education with Dr Don Wilcher

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released February 20th, 2023. Episode 620. Engineering Education with Dr. Don Wiltshire. Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: And I'm Dr. Don Wiltshire of Maydown Research.

Chris Gammell: Hey, Dr. Don, how are you doing?

Dave Jones: All right. And I like that name, Dr. Don. Either it's Dr. Don or Dr. D, but I like that. I was looking around with my wife. I like to get a cape so I could be like Dr. Doom, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, I don't think Dr. Doom is the one. He was not. I think he was the good guy, right?

Dave Jones: Right, right, right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: Bringing engineering mischief wherever you go.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there you go. I'm battling injustice with engineering mischief.

Chris Gammell: Injustice and lack of constraints in an engineering problem.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, right, right. What's the uncertainties, right? So, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: I have seen your name in my inbox on a pretty regular basis from the DigiKey and Design News, I think?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Continuing education courses for a long time. And I'm really excited to talk to you here. You've been doing lots of great talks and educational things. So I'm really excited that you're here. Can you give people an idea of your interests and area of study that you like to focus on?

Dave Jones: Well, my area of interest has always been electroelectronics. That's my baby. But, you know, I've been moving into the embedded sphere, prototyping hardware devices that can do industrial controls. That's megatronics-based type development, robotic systems. Really just putting brains into mechanical systems and improving their performance. So that's where my forte is and really originated, you know, working in the automotive industry or industry, I should say, way back when in like 1986 when I graduated from Wayne State University, which is a university, urban university in Detroit, Michigan. Yeah, that's right. Which they had a lot of great instructors. And those guys were like geniuses because they all had like master's degree. One had a master's in physics. One had a master's in electrical engineering. Another one was mathematics. So they really allow us to think on an engineering level, even though it was a two-year institution where you got to associate, you know, like you go out and be like a technician or maybe an engineering technician. But those guys really put that knowledge of analysis and thinking critically while I was getting the two-year degree. And, of course, I got, you know, my bachelor's in electrical engineering from there. And, you know, that's when I got into the industrial sector. And, again, starting at Willow Run Assembly Plant and learning about embedded systems built from an industrial perspective, meaning the programmable logic controllers. Yeah. And when I was taking that course at Henry Ford Community College, I couldn't understand the logic. It just, like, I didn't, I couldn't get it. You know, they had some wonderful training systems that they built. They, you know, say, hey, select a particular project that you want that will demonstrate how the PLC works in an industrial environment. So they had, like, pneumatic cylinders that you can select to say you're going to make this little pneumatic robot. Or they had some motor-driven, like, variable speed drive systems. But I could never figure out the logic part. And it clicked when I actually got into industry. It was like, oh, okay, that's what those guys were talking about when they were looking at those lateral logic.

Chris Gammell: It's seeing it, like, on the floor and seeing, like, being able to actually, like, move stuff and get, like, visual feedback and hearing things going right and wrong, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, me being an instructor right now at Jefferson Community College, I actually taught when I was in Michigan, Lawrence Tech University. So I was working with mechanical and electrical engineering students. And it was funny, Chris, because every time I would step into the classroom, I'd say, hey, this is what we're going to do. And what we're going to do is make stuff. Okay? Like, we're going to actually take what's in the book.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And we're going to explore if it's, you know, just traditional transistor amplifiers, ob-amp circuits, 555 timers, even, you know, like, low levels, I call it, power supplies, linear power supplies, looking at halfway full wave or, you know, full wave bridge. You know, they had a kit. And I would actually write these labs. And they thought it was like, I was like some mystic person because all of them would say, man, this is what we've been wanting to do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I remember in my university, like, you know, they had all of these very fancy mathy courses, but the one that hit, and I was just talking about this, Larry Sears, when he was on the show. He was the first one of two guests, whoever was at my Cleveland basement recording facility. There's a man who donated millions of dollars. And I invited him into my basement in Cleveland, and he graciously accepted. Yeah. He had the best course where it was just teaching out of, like, art of electronics and hands-on, that sort of thing. And people still talk about it. I mean, like, it's just, like, the course. So I'm sure you are the Larry Sears of Jefferson there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, you know, it's sad, Chris, that universities have moved away from that. Like, University of Alabama, I've been having conversations with them because I'm trying to, you know, formulate this relationship, a bridge program where anyone who gets a two-year degree can, you know, move on to get a two-year, say, engineering technology degree. And therefore, but there's a lot of politics, unfortunately, in post-secondary and higher ed. And so, you know, we have these conversations. But the key aspect is, for me, if you're going into engineering, if it's mechanical, electrical, chemical, you should be making stuff.

Chris Gammell: Totally.

Dave Jones: And we've lost that as a society, you know. Kids don't know the joy of making stuff anymore. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting point about the joy. I was going to, like, be like, oh, well, the practical nature is, like, well, you want to, like, show up and be able to show up at a job interview and all this other stuff. But there is also, like, just the, I don't know, like, that's a really good point about the joy because there's so many other things that people can do these days, right? There's so many other paths to making money and even interesting technical problems. And, like, if you don't have that joy, how are you going to get people to stick around and, like, stick it out through the bad math sessions and stuff like that?

Dave Jones: Right. And I agree. And, you know, you're bringing up a good point about the lower bad points. Because, you know, for me, you know, and we're all human, you know, I'll have my moments like, you know, I'm trying to think of, like, a project. And I got, like, tons of notebooks around me. I'm even looking at some of them where they, you know, I go in and find a page and, like, oh, I get inspired, right? And then from there I'll go into my creative mode. There's two ways I can do it either. I can kind of, you know, like, sketch out the concept, like a system block diagram. And then from there I'll go ahead and, you know, design the circuits. Not get into the analytics. The analytics really come for me when it doesn't work. And then I'll say, hey, I'm going to either do a model, some circuit simulation model, or I might do paper analysis, as I call it. But the real aspect of engineering is the making stuff, like, because the parameters are going to change. Environmentally, conditions are going to affect, you know, like how transistor work, for example.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah. Like, what is that? Was it Patton? It was like no plan survives the contact with the enemy or no. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: No lesson plan survives contact with the real world and the breadboard.

Dave Jones: Right. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the whole thing. I mean, you know, when I found out about breadboards, oh, man, that was like heaven to me because it opened up so many possibilities. I mean, I was, you know, I got exposed to this whole making thing. And I'm going to say, I think I was like four years old. And it was strange, Chris, because there was a radio that was like not in a case. It was just a printed circuit board. I didn't know what it was. Yeah. But I thought it was like little people actually, you know, talking, playing music. Right. But when I saw this radio, it's like, well, there's no little people. So what I did was and it was like a perfect storm. It was like, you know, somebody say, hey, this is this is your pathway. There was two wires. It was a red and black wire. And I knew that that little device needed power. So guess what I did? I plugged the red wire and the black wire into the 120 volt outlet and smoke came out. And I'm like, OK, where's the little people? But that's what really inspired me.

Chris Gammell: It's funny. That's you know, like it's the engineers have they all have the same origin story or some some version of it. And yeah, you got the same same origin story there. You know, it's like I took a thing apart or I blew a thing up. Right. You know, like it's great. I love it.

Dave Jones: It goes back to that Dilbert cartoon where the mom takes Dilbert to the doctor. And, you know, he's like he's constantly taking things apart. And the doctor said, oh, and she said, what is it, doctor? He say he has the knack and the mom's screaming. Right. Right. Right. She starts screaming. Yeah. You know, it is. But that that's the whole, you know, like DNA for us. Right. We see the world differently and we want to understand it. So then we can understand it is we go in and we take stuff apart and that's where the knowledge starts to grow. Right. The hands on skills start to be developing and one thing leads to another. And next, you know, you're you know, you got your own little lab and I always had a lab. I mean, yeah, just making stuff right. Taking things apart. Just I got to have a lab to be creative, you know, so I can learn how the world works.

Chris Gammell: Yep. That's great. I'd love to go back to the, you know, that you mentioned like the industrial focus that has a special place in my heart. I come from that space as well. And we've had other guests on the show, like I mentioned before we started recording, like John Davis, who works in that space. And we've had a couple other folks. But could you kind of just give us a rundown of like, I always kind of see PLC stuff and I've been around PLC stuff and, you know, but like, what is what is the main operating mode of PLC? And then later in the show, I'd love to talk more about how people are moving between that world and kind of like the more programmatic world and where the crossover happens.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, PLCs, Dick Worley was, they call him the father of programmable logic controllers. And what he noticed was this movement that was happening in the industrial space where some of the tasks that say workers were doing, particularly like skill workers, you know, they were making controls and they were doing it using relays and switches and indicator lamps. But he thought it would be more advantageous if there was a box that if you could take the physicality of the contacts of the switches and illumination of the lights, you can put it into this box and just basically use the knowledge that the plant floor technician, electrician had meaning like relay ladder logic. Okay. That's where the formulation of the PLC happened. And people call the PLC an industrial computer. And if Dick was alive today, he would turn over his grave. He's like, no, it's not an industrial computer. It's an industrial controller. But the fact that you have to have a computer where you put the software on, that's where people kind of moved it to like, oh, it's, it's a industrial computer. But that was never the intent. He wanted to make an industrial controller, a programmable industrial controller. And it was based on.

Chris Gammell: How would you define the difference between the computer and the controller?

Dave Jones: Well, the difference is it has its own architecture. And what you're doing with the laptop computer or the desktop PC is that's the interface where you can actually communicate with that PLC. Now they have handheld terminals and you can actually plug it into say a D9 connector, you know, some type of serial port where you got, you know, communication. But the challenge with that is if you've got a real long program, you don't want to be actually hitting the little symbols and, you know, constructing your, your lateral logic program. So the ideal of having a computer where it can be, you know, interfaces with that communication port and is talking directly to the CPU. It makes it more convenient because now you can take a mouse and you can, you know, move these little bit instructions as they call them. They got timers counters and you can construct the logic faster, more effectively. And then you can, you know, you can save it. You can actually go back and open up, not say you can't do that with a handheld terminal, but the time to, to do that, you know, you got to go through each wrong and then you got to find the bit instruction and you got to select it and change it to whatever you want it to be. Yeah. That's, that's the thing. So for me, I can see where they're saying it's a computer because it does have like inputs and outputs when you look at the modules in a rack. But the difference is the actual computer itself can do more than just, you know, doing controls. So that's where the controller comes in is it's like an embedded controller, right? You know about embedded systems. It's very task oriented, very specific. And all you're going to do is just hook up another means of interacting with it, you know, a laptop computer or a desktop PC, and then you can make your changes and then you can download the program. Or in this case, what they are doing, you can upload, upload it. And then you're off to the races. And now it's, it's, you know, running on its own, right? It's kind of like some semi autonomous. It just runs on its own. But then if you want to make changes, you're going to go ahead and do that. So that, that's what it means for me. It's, it's a programmable logic controller, not programmable logic computer. That's, that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So like in a PLC, normally you're programming ladder logic. It's translated into some kind of machine language at some point. And then it just like it's running like a tight loop. Is that kind of the thought or is it actually sequential?

Dave Jones: Depending on how you program it now, it does have a scan loop. So what happens is when you write, say three rungs of instruction, it will actually go through one rung and then look at all the states of the bid instructions. So what I mean by bid instructions is that they have examin if open and examin if closed or XIC and XIO. If closed just means that you're looking at when the switch is in an open state, the contacts and it transitions to a closed contact or in this case, like an event, then that's the examin if closed. Thus, you know, you're examining it when it's closed, what's going to happen. If it's examin if open, now the, the switch is already in a closed position. So now you're getting into this inversion. So when you look at it from that standpoint, you want to see when the contacts open and that's where your rung is going to be true, right? Even though it's like, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense because if it's open, it's not going to work. No, you're looking at the logic perspective, not the functionality. The functionality is there because when you actually mount all these switches, even sensors onto a specific machine, you have actuators and the actuators are going to basically engage with those switches or sensors. And that's where the magic happens. So you have to look at it from that standpoint when it's running, but also meaning like a dynamic standpoint, but a real time, but you got to look at it from the initial condition. Like what is the state of the machine and then what's going to trigger it to make it do some type of output response.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Could you give us an idea about like maybe the practical limits on what you would expect to see in a single PLC in terms of like the actual application? So like, you know, a conveyor belt plus a, you know, I don't know, a slicer and a food factor or something like that versus, versus like, uh, you know, an entire car line. Like where, where does it fall? Like where you would start to split up into multiple controllers?

Dave Jones: That's pretty interesting because they do have what's called distributive control systems, DCSs.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: And the ideal behind that is to kind of spread the wealth, meaning you don't want to overwhelm the main processor, you know, like the microcontroller. So the ideal is if you're going to do a distributive controller, it's pretty much like you have a remote, like a PLC that's at a remote station. So you got an operator that wants to start this meat slicer. Okay. That you described.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Sure. So they got, they got a control panel, an operator's panel and the meat slicer is distance away because we don't want that operator to get damaged, you know, like hurt. Okay. Because it might do something crazy. So you, you put that, you know, actual meat slice mechanism distance away. And now that meat slicer will have a controller there on, on, you know, in this location. So you can network them. Right. Now the ideal is by networking them, you setting up this communication network and it's sending data to and from the remote versus the distance controller. But the, the, the key is you don't have one processor that's doing all the work you're distributing. Right.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: The workload, if you will, like how it's going to be able to effectively work as one system. And that's, that's pretty good because again, you don't want to overtax that one PLC microcontroller where it's got to do multiple tasks. And, you know, that can kind of bog down the system depending on what that system is.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Okay. What about like, uh, so like on a single controller now, so like you have one that's on the meat slicer, whatever it is. And are there like kind of, I don't know, rules of thumb or similar, like, uh, for like how many inputs and outputs it can handle, or is that more hardware dependent depending on the vendor you go with?

Dave Jones: It's more hardware dependent because the way that works is you'll have a rack and the rack will allow you to actually put the various, uh, IO modules. You can put counters, you can put sensors. So depending on your application, that's where you get into the design of the architecture, right? So you do your system architecture and you say, Hey, I'm going to have like three inputs and those three inputs are going to tie into the main, you know, processing unit. And then what's going to come out of processing unit is like the actuators or indicator lamps. So you design it from that point, looking at your inputs and outputs, and then you look at the requirements, right? The system scope, you know, what, what's how we're going to actually, or what the customer wants. So now you have that piece of the puzzle. And for me, when I do my designs, I always do it from that system block diagram, like how things are going to be laid out. And once I have that, now I can get into the specific interfacing methods I'm going to use to, you know, look at the signals that those input devices are, are producing and then how the processor is going to handle it. And then, you know, what's the output signals. If I'm going to use, like, if I'm looking at 120 volt actuator, I need a output module that has a triac. And then I need to know what the load requirements are, meaning how much current that track needs to source to that actuator. Then I can select the right, you know, actuator that has the right source and current capability.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. It does kind of feel like in, in this, like the scenarios you're talking about here, it's almost like you're, you know, like, like you'd said at the beginning of the show, you're trying to make sure that engineering courses have these real world examples, but it seems like in this case, it's like, you're just starting in the real world because you are, you're already talking about specifications based on like real world, like choice of hardware and things like that. And it feels like it's just, I mean, that made me feel like I was on the design floor, like the design at the factory floor kind of thing. And you're like, just talking through specs about what do you need with a factory manager, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's important to, to bring, you know, the, the real world into the classroom. It's funny, you know, today, you know, I, I teach a, uh, it's called blueprint reading for manufacturing. Of course they don't have blueprints in your war.

Chris Gammell: Right. First, first thing you do is open Adobe reader. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: It's all digital based, man. It's, it's funny. Like blueprint. I don't know who came up with that, but anyway, I had to kind of, you know, let my learners know, like, Hey, you know, back in the day. Yeah. They used to have, you know, blueprints. It had the blue, but you know, now we live in a digital age and even a book that we have, it's called print reading. Okay. Print reading is more appropriate. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: So I always bring the real world into the classroom and, you know, like print, when you teach that class, most of them, not me, but the ones who, you know, have taught it, they just go from the book and it's very dry. You know, it's like, you know, you're learning about lines and dimensions and different views and, you know, that's great.

Chris Gammell: I have a question that is suited perhaps perfectly to you and your experience here. Why, when I look at, okay, so I look at these connector diagrams and I, I, I, in my heart of hearts, I believe that they are, they're trying their darn best, but some of these connector manufacturers, when they do a drawing and they dimension it and they're, and I'm trying to make a footprint from it, it's like, there's no, it's never like dimensioned off center. You know, like all I really want to know is like, where do I put zero, zero on my footprint for, for KiCad? And then like, I want to know like how, how far away is each footprint from that? Right. And it feels like it's always dimension from God knows where, like the, I guess the edges, maybe like what, why, why do they draw the way they do Dr. Don?

Dave Jones: And that's a good question. And the only thing I can say is it's based on the person's experience.

Chris Gammell: Oh no.

Dave Jones: Like, like, like you have datums. So the datum is, is really looking at what you're talking about, you know, like where's the point of origin and I, and I'm like you too, like for me, the point of origin for all parts is like, like the center. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like I want the, like the geographic center. So like where the, where the pick and place machine is going to pick up. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Exactly. But it's not, it's based on how they're actually manufacturing it. And then their datum is going to change that, that reference point. And it makes it difficult. So that's where you got to know how to like translate it when you open up a package like AutoCAD, right? You can translate or move that datum to where it's like, okay, it makes sense to me. It should be in the center. But yeah, that that's, it's just the individual. I mean, I've seen so many drawings, Chris, and I know that's what you're talking about right now. It's like, it pulls your hair out. Like, yeah, I wanted to be in the center so I can.

Chris Gammell: That is such a, like a key point where like, I could totally mess that up in my design. And like, at a certain point I look at that, I'm like, oh, I could just hire this out. Someone else can do this for me. You know, like, I just, I don't trust myself sometimes, even if I'm, even if I'm at the top of my game and I've had my two cups of coffee and whatever, like, I'm just, I don't feel like it's going to go well, you know, just because of the history.

Dave Jones: And yeah, and I think it just, it goes back to, to experience also something that I realized based on this conversation. You know, a lot of times the designer is so overwhelmed with work and, you know, the ideal of that particular print is really a communication tool. It's like a, it's a sales marketing tool, right? So you're talking to an engineer and you say, Hey, here's the dimensions. And there you have it. It should fit right in your little, you know, spot, you know, like your application, but they don't get into the specifics. Like you're saying, Hey, I want to make sure that when I do get the model that you have provided, that, that center, that reference to what I have. And, and it, yeah, unfortunately it doesn't work that way. They'll, they'll give you the dimensions and they'll even give you the cats, but that's where you're going to have to do that translation to move that datum where you want it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I do feel like it's some kind of crossover of like the mechanic, you know, like a connector company is mostly mechanical engineers. And I figured that maybe they're, they're tolerancing it because that's what their, you know, their mold manufacturer has to do that sort of thing. And at some point, some electro weenie like me is going to go and like, be like, Oh, how do I put this on a circuit board? But, but I don't think that that mechanical engineer cares about it at the moment of drawing, unfortunately.

Dave Jones: Jackpot, you hit it. They, they don't really care. They, they, they're looking at it from their manufacturing process. And hopefully, you know, the marketing guy or gal, when they go out, they see the Chris Gammells in the world and say, Hey, I got this great connector for you. And you kind of give them some information. It's like, Oh, this will do the job. And then once you, you know, sign on dotted line, you realize, wait a minute, the model doesn't drive what I'm trying to do. So you may have to, you know, massage it, right. Get in there, maybe do some editing and get it where you want it. But yeah, you, you, you're hitting on a good point. A lot of times it's the mechanical engineer. I work with mechanical engineers when I was doing product design on automobiles. And I had my little body controller module and it's funny because, you know, I'll, we always came late. Not, we didn't come late, but they never introduced us to the party first, meaning mechanical engineers, designers, because, you know, they're looking at the sheet metal and they say, we need this, you know, this space and this real estate. And then here I come with my little widget and they started laughing at me. It's like, what's funny. Well, you only got this space to work with. That's it. You know, you can't put any holes in there. You can't, you know, deform the metal because the integrity is going to be jeopardized. So good luck. Like what the hell, man? Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah. And you know, that's interesting too, because like you said, like there's like at a connector company, it's kind of like how they're communicating. I also feel like there's always priority in terms of like the expertise of that company, right? So like an extra company, again, they, they start from mechanical engineering perspective. I'm sure there's a huge mechanical engineering perspective at automotive companies too, because that's just how those companies started. And they have such a huge outsized impact on the overall piece, you know, final product, right? The mechanical. So, so critical there.

Dave Jones: Right. And the mechanics really aligns with the aesthetics. You know, like when you talk about the sheet metal, the integrity, you know, one thing to say, you can't drill a whole bunch of holes on this surface because now, you know, the integrity, the structural integrity is going to be jeopardized. So they'll make the structure where it will handle a certain amount of impact. But now here, here comes me with my little black box and it's like, oh crap, you know, it's like, I mean, those guys really get into the shape. I mean, it's, it's artistry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you know, they don't really understand or really don't care. Maybe I shouldn't say don't care, but we, we just like, well, no one's going to.

Chris Gammell: Is that prioritizing?

Dave Jones: Yeah. No one's going to see your little box.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know what? I mean, I've had one mechanical engineer, Chris, he told me like, it doesn't really matter. It's like, no one's going to see your box, but it does because as you know, the metal, depending on what the circuit is, if it's, if it's an RF circuit, it can actually what attenuate that signal. And now if you're talking about a keyless entry type application, guess what? Instead of having 30 feet, you're down to five feet, you know, cause all that sheet metal.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's, that is one of those, you know, it all comes down to trade-offs and like being able to negotiate the, I mean, and like big companies too, it makes it even tougher. I'm sure. What, uh, when you were, when you were doing that product design level stuff, you, so you were doing keyless and what other kinds of, what other kinds of designs were you doing there?

Dave Jones: When I made a transition from the industrial sector, like controls, I started off as a wiring packing engineer. And that's pretty interesting. I think any engineer that's going to get into designing modules, you need to know like the, how the wire harness or in this case, how the electrical current's going to flow. So because the ideal behind that is you got a box and, you know, depending on the wire length, you might actually start to attenuate some of the signals, especially if it's something, you know, critical. My stuff wasn't, I shouldn't say wasn't critical, but it wasn't like an engine controller. The body controller was, was an experiment where you took various modules that were an instrument panel. Like you had a windshield wiper, you had, uh, uh, lighting control, you had audible alarms, you know, they usually package those guys in the instrument panel. So the idea was to help with, you know, cafe laws, you know, like gas consumption based on the weight of the vehicle. Someone came up with the ideal of, Hey, let's do a system integration method where we can take all those functions, AKA the modules and put it on one board. Thus the body controller module was born. So the body controller module had a, at that time, uh, it had a 68 HC 11 and you had, you know, all the supporting ICs. Motorola at the time was the key designer.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Meaning manufacturing that, that module. But my role was to look at it from a system standpoint. So what that means, we had other engineers that were basically having to put or connect to my body controller module because they had those functions in it. That, that became very interesting because now you get into this conversation of like wetting currents for, for door lock switches, because you got to have at least like 10 milliamps of wetting current to make sure that the contacts are clean. So, you know, that was one thing I had to do, but I had to work with say a product engineer that had a door lock switch and, and, and kind of work with their specifications and then do the integration. So ultimately, you know, and I even have the document in, in my lab here, you got all these pages and their subsystems, but the subsystems have circuits. So from there, you know, you got this massive integration and the module is pretty small. It's not like a huge, gigantic module. It's in a plastic case.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: You know, it's got the male header connector and you, you know, make everything with the female connectors. But, you know, the ideal behind that was again, let's put a box that can communicate with other boxes. So that's where the can bus came into play because can is control area network, but that was really industrial application method of communication. Right.

Speaker ?: That's true.

Dave Jones: But then someone meaning the automotive side decided, Hey, if you can use it for industrial applications, why not an automobile? Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because Chrysler had their own proprietary system and it uses a twisted pair differential means of communication. And it was based on biasing. Like whoever sends the message out first, it had a different current characteristic and that module will get presidents over the other ones. So you had to come up with this architecture of, you know, who can get the, you know, get the bus at the time when it needed. Okay. Almost like time sharing in automobile. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So this, you know, we were actually just talking about, Dave and I were doing, we did a show yesterday of this recording. We recorded it late, but we were talking about wire harnessing after harnesses actually. And just like, well, to be honest, how little we knew about them. I mean, and it sounds like that's pretty, pretty integral to this type of work that you were doing. I mean, what, what was your experience with like, did you have control over what actually was going onto that wire harness when you were doing these designs? Or was it kind of like you were then working with like a endpoint that was already given to you?

Dave Jones: I was working with the product engineers, meaning at that time, they call them release engineers that were, you know, like you had one release engineer that was, all they did was they looked at door switches. So they became like the gurus of door switches. Oh, wow. You'll have someone that did like cigarette lighters and cigarette lighters are pretty interesting. Meaning at the time they had a little glow ring that I learned a lot about that, about hotspots and you know, how to, how those designers look at the optics and make sure that they got. Do they put those in cars anymore? I don't know. I don't think so. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: I think they just, they just put the ports now. Right. Cause it's like everybody made those 12 volt adapters. Right. But they never. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Right. But back in the day, yeah, man, they, they had a little, uh, it was, it was, yeah, it was pretty cool. You, you had a little, little glow ring, right? Little optics and you had the, the, the, the little 12 volt bulb and it will actually, you know, illuminate that, that ring. But the problem was it had hotspots. So they had to figure out that, but yeah, doing the wire harness packaging deal, that was really an entry point for me to get into like the electromechanics. Cause I was, you know, getting involved with switches and all of a sudden they knew I had a background in, and, you know, circuits. And the guy that brought me on the team, he was a ham radio operator. The guy was brilliant, but he was an asshole. You know, he was just, he couldn't, he couldn't get along with his people.

Chris Gammell: That sounds like ham, ham radio operators. He was brilliant.

Dave Jones: The guy was like, and he, and he would like berate the team in front of the suppliers and they kind of looked at him like, what's going on here? He never did that with me because I wouldn't let that happen, but it was just the point. We had this mutual respect, like my hobby was electronics. His was hop, you know, electronics, but he was in the ham radio. So he really liked what I was doing and appreciate my knowledge. And I was learning a lot from him and, you know, we did some cool, cool designs, but yeah, the wire harness was my entry point to vehicle systems. And I got into like, say, electromechanical components. And then I moved into, you know, the electronics, which I really wanted to do. And that's where the body controller is a good lessons learned for me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds awesome. I mean, and like the, just the integration size, I feel like, you know, we were talking about like just how many, how many circuit boards are on modern cars, but even, even a couple of years back, it was just, there's been so many, there are so many subsystems regardless. And like you mentioned, there's, you know, there's so many subsystems that they started to, to push them into one thing with the body controller module. It's just like, it seems like a really, really just complex system.

Dave Jones: Oh, it is. It is. I've got, let's see, I'm looking right now on the top shelf of my, well, the bookshelf where I actually, like I was doing, again, education was always with me. Right. So I would actually collect some of these old modules and I'll make like little stands, you know, like display stands so I can show like how the electronics has evolved from my perspective when I got involved in it. And like the, I'd say probably the mid 1990s, like 95, 96, because I was working on a Grand Cherokee at that time. So I got a lot. Oh, cool. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when I, you know, this engineer, he was the senior engineer and he, he embraced my ability. So I was actually developing some prototypes, which was a lot of fun in a garage. But yeah, that integration is, is important. So I have all these modules showing like before and then after, and the after is just, you know, here's one module, but before you have several modules. Right. And that's because, you know, cafe and weight requirements and gasoline emissions and, you

Chris Gammell: know, fuel efficiency. You said that earlier. I don't know what cafe means. What is cafe?

Dave Jones: It's a, it's a standard. I'm trying to remember the acronym, but it relates to me. See, California air fuel emissions cafe. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Cool. So it was based on the weight of the vehicle and how that can impact fuel economy. So if, if you had like a wire harness, which we, you know, we actually did this. This was great. We're looking at the door mugs and the door mugs is basically eliminating a lot of wiring because you had individual switches, which you do, but what you've done is you actually have a module that reduces the amount of weight because you can have within the module itself, a microcontroller. And now you set up this little network. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So instead of having like three wires that goes to a switch, you can maybe like narrow down the two wires. Okay. And I'm kind of exaggerating there, but the idea was you saw this weight reduction and that played an important part of the cafe standards. It's definitely for, you know, California, but also it impacted other, you know, states in terms of fuel emissions. Yeah. You know, back there.

Chris Gammell: Everything follows California. Right. Just like they drive. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're the worst case. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. They're the worst case. So I had a lot of fun back then.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't seem like that would like the wiring harness would make that big a difference, but I guess when you really add it all up throughout the whole vehicle, like, like that much copper, you really probably could start to take, take it down quite a bit. Huh?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, again, when we did the exercise with the door muck, you know, we had this massive wire harness going through the door, through the pass through to the, you know, through the inch, uh, the passenger compartment and the driver's compartment in particular, it was a massive like bundle of wires. But when we did the door mucks, man, we, we chopped that guy down like by half. And I mean, literally we, we did a prototype, you know, we made our own printed circuit boards and as we started to put our module into the door and we were pulling out the old harness, we, we saw the reduction in wiring because we're using a communication bus. That really helped because we can communicate from the driver to the passenger side. But if you didn't have that, you got to run those wires, you know, for one side of, of the vehicle, meaning the door, meaning the left side to the right side. And you got this massive amount of wire harness and you know, there's, there's weight. I mean, when you pick it up, it's like, wow, this is some weight here.

Chris Gammell: Right. And then times every function that's out there, I guess. Yeah. The left, right. And like Cherokees aren't small vehicles either. So that, and you have to go kind of up and over as well, or down and under or some, somewhere across.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. And you know, you have to go to the, to the engine compartment. You may have to run the wire along the, the side rail on the, on the floor pan back to where maybe you got your fuel sender unit. So, you know, the method of, okay, the harness is like your veins and it's sending information, electrical information, but there's gotta be a better way to do it. And that's where looking at the, the control air network or CAN bus was really significant to that because now it's a messaging scheme. Right. And based on how the protocol meaning like your bits, you can send that over the CAN bus. And instead of, like I say, having massive wires to look at every switch, there's a message associated with every device. And when it sees that binary bit pattern and I was like, oh, the doors are a lot or the windshield wiper is running. Okay. And you know, there was a couple of smart people that came up with that. I was amazed, like, wow, how did they do this? You know, and they had this massive book that we had to use to actually validate all the electronics in the vehicle, looking at the messages. And they had some diagnostic tools that to develop where we can look at the message was basically a hexadecimal message, but you can actually decode the message if you had an oscilloscope, which I did. And it was pretty cool because you can actually see like if the door is, is locked and you know, at this bit position, cause it was a bit message that it should be a one. Then if you put the scope on it, you, and if you press the switch, you'll see that one at that particular bit position. Yeah. And it's like, wow, that's pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's like the, uh, the car hacking folks too. Like the, uh, if you go to like Defcon, the car hackers, they'll go and reverse engineer canned messages and messages and stuff like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You had mentioned blueprint reading as a, as a class you teach, but like in, in the case of like that wiring harness, what is, what does that drawing look like? So like, if you, if you were going to sit down and be like, I want to know how the left side door switch or the left side door, uh, uh, up, up down for the backside, right side passenger window is connected. Like how, what does that drawing look like?

Dave Jones: The drawing is going to basically consist of the connectors and it's going to show not the individual wires, but it's going to show the diameter of the bundle that branches off the main wire harness. And it'll have the dimensions like the length, the, yeah, the diameter, but then it'll show the connectors on there because we work with Packer electric. They were our connector, you know, for, for, for, uh, GM, they were the, the key supplier of, you know, all connectors and they start branching off to other automotive, uh, manufacturers, but yeah, they will actually have all the prints, uh, related to the connectors and, you know, the, the, the pin outs, uh, everything you need to actually take the connector apart, replace it. They had special tools cause the pins had like little barbs on the actual pins.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And they had a crimp, they had tolerances on everything. Okay. Sure. You know, the vehicles is a dynamic, uh, moving machine. So if, if one of those connectors and I've seen it where one of the pins and the cavity of a connector with, with the right amount of force, it can actually push out of that, that, that cavity. Therefore the mating pin, meaning the female won't make with the male. So now you got this, you know, intermittency and it's all based on that, that pin, that meeting the, the, the current requirements or the force requirements. So that's basically, yeah. Yeah. A wiring harness diagram will just show at least the ones I have, uh, looked at, they will just show the bundle size, like the route wire routing. They'll show that like for doors, you got to make sure you got a, a service loop really for all wire harnesses. But they had like a drip loop because one thing they discovered, which is pretty cool. Uh, I don't know if you've ever done this. The door has a shower curtain as they call it. It's, it's a piece of plastic that fits over the sheet metal. Oh, what that does is like condensation, right? So you have to have this drip loop so that the water will, you know, basically flow in a direction where it's going to basically drop at the bottom of the door frame as opposed to like running down the harness and then getting into a connector and then you got, you know, that problem. So it was really fascinating to learn about wire harnesses. Like if you grab a wire harness, it has this natural tendency to want to form in, in one like, well, form. So we had to basically not fight the wire harness. If that makes any sense.

Chris Gammell: Right. So you have to like kind of design around that or design with that in mind and like, yeah. Yeah. Put it in the bends where the bends want to be, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Exactly. It's like the, the wood grain, right? Yeah. Right. That's good. You know, you don't kind of crisp the grain, right? Yeah. Same thing with wire harnesses. If you fight it, it's not going to give you those, you know, like the service loop. It's not going to have the right service loop, uh, the length or like I say that, that drip loop, uh, it's not, it's just not going to work. Yeah. It'll just cause all kinds of problems.

Chris Gammell: So how did you go from, so you were in doing design and stuff like this, but then you've gotten into the education side of things and, and you're Dr. Don, uh, you have your PhD in education. Um, what, what was that, what was that switch over? Where, how did you start doing that?

Dave Jones: Well, education was always with me. I mean, my mom told me this, I'm laughing now cause it's like, yep, I'm in the right spot. Uh, she told me that she said, uh, she, it was a parent teacher conference and you know, teacher wants to see her and I didn't know what it was about. You know, I think it was like in the first, second grade, but anyway, had a parent teacher cop. She came back and she had this look on her face. Now she wasn't mad. It kind of had like a smile, but it was like, you know, I got to be stern here. But what she told me was that while the teacher was in front, you know, showing kids how to read, I wasn't back showing kids how to read and the teacher heard me. Right. And she's like, you know, that's cool that, you know, I know how to read, but that, you know, I was disturbing the class. Right. And, you know, my mom just said, Hey, you know, kind of chilling. That was really like the beginning of me being where I'm at right now, but the whole ideal of picking up these skills and showing people like the passion of, you know, making stuff, electronic circuits. You know, I was doing woodworking, just making stuff, man, just constantly like, Hey, here's something that doesn't work. Guess what? I'm not going to throw away. I'm going to repurpose it. You know, I'm going to make it into a robot or some type of little, you know, device. Right. And I'll put it in a little pill container, whatever, and I'm off to the races. So that, that was, you know, like just thinking about it right now, reflecting that was really the starting point for me where I'm at right now. So wherever I worked, I would see all these, you know, like modules and components thrown away. And I remember I asked the, uh, the manager when I was working at GM and their tech center in Flint, Michigan, I said, Hey, what are all these modules going? And she said, well, we're going to scrap them. I say, scrap them. And these will be great, you know, educational tools to show kids about electronics and get them interested in the work that we've done. And she said, Oh no, because it's proprietary. And I'm like, well, what do you mean? You know? And she said, well, maybe one of the kids' parents work at a competitor and they can like reverse it. And I was like, okay, that's all right. So, you know, they, they would shut down like the IP, like they think people are just going to, you know, like, Oh, we're going to, you know, make our own connector business. No, I was looking at it from the standpoint of the fun, the learning, and also filling the pipeline. That's important, right? Yeah. They do it in sports. They don't do it a lot in, in, in, you know, engineering technical fields. That's why like Dean came into the world with first competition, you know, it's like, we got to replenish this, this skillset, this knowledge base, because if not, that's where we're at right now, as you see, you know, our competitors, foreign competitors, we showed them some things, but they surpassed us because they believed in what education.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's definitely a important area of focus. If, if you want to have future growth, you can't just glide based on, uh, on past stuff yet. There's a continual reinvestment type of thing.

Dave Jones: Right, right, right. So that was always with me, you know, just, I would do, um, like at the community center, I remember I would have these Saturday workshops. They were like Saturday enrichment programs for adults and kids. And I had one that was called electric, uh, electricity and, uh, robotics. So they bought like a radio shack kit and they learn about electricity, but, you know, show them how to wire up to motors. And I had like this Tandy 100 computer and I was showing like, Hey, if you know this, then you can actually do some interfacing stuff. Right. So I was doing demos with that writing basic programs and, uh, just, just having fun, but showing people, you know, particularly the kids. Cause they, you know, the parents then squaw. I say, Hey, they need this kit with these parts. And guess what? The kids had the parts in the kit and we just had a great time. So, you know, just again, trying to share some knowledge and the passion that I have in engineering, electrical engineering and just making stuff. And that's always been with me. So, yeah, that's great.

Chris Gammell: And so you are teaching now, what is, as you mentioned, the blueprints course, what are the other kinds of things that you teach at the Jefferson state, but then also online as well?

Dave Jones: Okay. So I teach electric circuits one, which is what they call DC electronics. So it's the fundamentals about resistors and LEDs and series parallel circuits. But what I've always done is I always like to talk about the application stuff. Cause I think that's important. What I'm seeing is a lot of engineers and I've talked to, you know, in, you know, engineering professors, they said, Don, these, these engineers, they don't know how to make like a flashlight circuit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's my Chris.

Chris Gammell: Young Chris agrees. He's nodding his head and saying, I had no idea how to do that.

Dave Jones: Right. So those skillsets are neat, especially industry, because, you know, my industry part is like, we have an advisory board or advisory committee and they come in periodically, you know, we have meetings like twice a month where I might go out there or they might come, you know, to, to the facility and talk about, you know, some of the skills that they're looking for. Cause right now everyone's looking for industrial maintenance technicians. Oh, that's kind of like the big, yeah. Like maintaining the machines, right. The robotics, the, the, the, the mechatronics based stuff, you know, the welding is at a minimum. They have welders. Welders is like, Oh, gee, you talk about career tech education. Welders are like number one because you know, infrastructure, right. Making new plants, buildings, maintaining, making, uh, uh, jigs, uh, test stands. You know, the, the welder is like the, one of the hottest areas that, you know, the state of Alabama, Alabama is promoting and it's really international, but mostly in the Southern States, but the industrial maintenance is, is huge because they're saying we got all these automation systems and we need, you know, the technicians to be able to maintain them. So, you know, the circuits DC is one eight. There's a electric circuits two class that deals with AC. So you understand about what I call like the anatomy of a sine wave. What does it consist of? How do you calculate VRMS from peak to peak, the peak voltage, uh, phase angles. You get into the trigonometry now because you got a reactive elements like inductors and capacitors. So you got inductive reactants and, and capacity reactants. And I was just doing that last week with one of my, my students, he's actually a electrician that works at us steel. And you know, the guy is like, he wants to learn like, Hey, can you do that? You show me this. So it was just me and him in a lab. And it was great. You know, we got this lab boat system and we're doing analysis. I'm showing them how to, you know, take measurements and it was just great. So I, I do that. I teach the introduction of robotics and that's where we got some ABB robots. They learn about how to program. Um, but what I've done is since COVID and this was even before COVID, I say, wouldn't it be great if they can actually do home-based labs where like some of my learners and I go between learners and students. So what's a learner? A learner to me is lifelong. You know, you're constantly like learning a student to me is like this temporary. Right. And when I was getting my, my, my doctorate degree and you know, my master's at Capella, they say you're learners and it just stuck with me. So that's, that's what it is. But you know, the home-based labs, the kits. So I'll say, Hey, buy this Arduino kit and I'm going to make some labs. There might be some labs that come with it. And if you miss, you can still play at home. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm taking the phrase that, you know, Dave says, you know, Hey, kitties, you can play at home, but they can, they can play at home.

Chris Gammell: Keep things going and you keep it, keep exploring and trying other things.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. You're, you're in the comforts of your home and you can add to it. Right. Cause the kit, you know, you know about kits and electronics, you just keep adding and adding and adding, and it, and it just grows into this wondrous, you know, learning experience, but they're gaining these skills that companies are looking for, you know, technicians and definitely like engineers. Yeah. They're saying that like, Hey, engineers, they're, they're great. They can write very good, you know, software algorithms. But if you ask them to design, you know, light bulb circuit, they're like, what's that? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So is there any focus to like in this kind of specific thing where they're looking for like industrial maintenance type thing? Is there like, are there any courses about troubleshooting? Like where does, where does troubleshooting kind of fall in this?

Dave Jones: Ah, well, I'm teaching that class. It's called automated system diagnosis and troubleshooting.

Chris Gammell: Okay. See, now I'd like to take that class. I think, I think that would be my jam.

Dave Jones: Oh, here's, here's how that works. We have this Megatronic system that Amitrol makes, and it's, it's a pretty nice representation of what you'll see in, in an industrial environment. It's got a, a FANUC robot. And basically what it's doing is making this little pneumatics, uh, valve. Okay. So you, you put one, like the body of, of the valve on this turntable, and then you, you know, push the process button and then you see everything working, right? You see the, they got a little pneumatic robots and it's got proximity sensors. And so it's going through these different stages and it's, it's actually assembling this little pneumatic valve. So once it gets to like close to the end, the robot, the FANUC robot has been programmed for one specific task. And that is to reposition the, the little body of the valve because there's like a little plunger. So if you can imagine this, it's got a body and it's got ports like holes, and then there's a spring and then what goes inside the spring is the plunger and there's a little knob. So if you press on the knob, you know, the spring will compress and actually what's happening is the, the plunger is really a bobbin and it's blocking the port. So if you're putting air, say, yeah, it'll block. And if it releases, they allow the air to go the other way. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So that's what this device is making. And it's got a plastic body and it's got a metal body. So the robot is going to reposition it so it can finish the process of adding the little button. Okay. For the plunger. Then it, it moves on this little conveyor. And then there's another robot and it's a pneumatic based robot. It'll actually grab that part. And then there's a proximity sensor. So the proximity sensor will basically determine it's like a sliding hand magic. It knows where to put the metal parts, meaning the metal valves on this little chute. It's like a little, little slide, if you will, that will separate all the metal pneumatic valves from the plastic pneumatic valves, but it's based on the proximity switch. So it's really detecting like you got inductive and capacitive proximity sensors. It's really looking at the, the, the metal proximity or excuse me, the metal valve. So if it sees that it knows it goes in one bin, if not, it'll go in the other bin.

Chris Gammell: Okay, cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So this little robot would just do that. It'll just move it like, Oh, Oh, that's metal. Put it on, you know, like the left-hand side. And then every, and if it's not, it'll just put it next to the left hand, like, like in the middle. So you got all these little, little bins and it'll just, you know, make production if you will.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. So is, is there like a troubleshooting, uh, piece of that though? Like, is it? Yeah. Is there like a, a systematized troubleshooting thing? That's what I'm always curious about. Like, how do we teach? So like teaching design is one thing. And I think that kind of takes, there's like the fundamentals for sure. Like you said, like circuits one and two, AC, DC, all the stuff in there, understanding how electricity works. Like when I think about like my own, how I actually learn to make things, I think it's kind of like the, I kind of wish there was more of like the, the doctor method of like the, the, the watch do teach kind of thing. And like, and so much of that is so hard to, to systematize, I feel like. And I was wondering if maybe you have cracked that code.

Dave Jones: Well, well, the way that, that, that Megatronic system that is described, each unit can be separated.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So what, so when I got my, my Siemens level one Megatronics instructor cert, we had all the instructors. And what happened was you can take those sections apart. So you got to like a turntable, you got a sorter. So based on, you know, the system that you have, you can individually separate these parts and there's a PLC. So the PLC is actually controlling, you know, the main rotational linear actuator type device. It's on that, that section. And you learn the troubleshoot based on that. Like you have, they'll give you the, the wiring diagrams. They'll give you a system block diagrams. And then the instructors will actually put bugs in there. And as a team, we'll start to do these systematic checks. So like check continuity, do some voltage checks, maybe do some current measurement checks, you know, test out the PLC. Like, do you see the signal? You can force the outputs on or off. You can actuate and see the input switching because the indicators are turning on the LED indicator. So you start to learn this method of troubleshooting. And for me, it's always left to right. Like you read left to right. So you got the source, you get into the input stuff. There's a processing unit. You look at that and then you come out to the load, which is being driven by some type of, in this case, controller, transistor driver, whatever. And then you check the load. So that's how I learned to troubleshoot when I, you know, went to Henry Ford. It was always left to right. But some people would like go from the load side and then go in to the power supply. So if you do one or the other, the key is to be consistent.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's, no, that's great. That's great. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And so it does sound like there's like this kind of industrial. So we've been talking about kind of the PLCs and the industrial focus and stuff like that. And we've also talked about, you know, some of the home kits you mentioned and stuff. And so one of the things that I alluded to is I wanted to ask you about was kind of the, the role of programmatic systems in, in these environments. So like you had mentioned like the industrial computer versus the controller, but really like my question is, is there a, is there a paradigm shift happening where you see more computers and like Arduinos and processing elements like that on the factory floor in industrial environments versus a PLC or is the PLC just reigning, reigning supreme still?

Dave Jones: It's still reigning. It still has that, that president's crisp. And the reason is you have traditional technicians and, you know, the, the maintenance supervisor. So they're comfortable with it. So when you mentioned about the paradigm, yeah. I mean, what is it? Arduino has the, what's it called? The Optia? Their PLC version? Yeah. That's a new, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think the, I'd be lying if I didn't say that, that, that is exactly what I was thinking about. I was, I was wondering if that, what do you think about that? Because like, you know, and it, and it, you know, to their credit, they, they have, they have ladder logic on there and it can be, you know, either or, but like, I was a little surprised by it. If I'm being honest. And, but maybe it's an interesting thing for them, you know, like there's more vision in the space. There's more computing generally, but I didn't think, I didn't think it was going to be the thing that was running. The meat chopping machine, like we talked about in the early this show, you know?

Dave Jones: Right. Right. And, and see the advantage of using like an Arduino or even like the Raspberry Pi Pico. I think there's some interest in like, Hey, we can make it into a PLC is the fact that now you have this neural network thing that's happening with artificial intelligence.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: PLCs. They're not designed to think like, like real time. I should, and I'm being very careful when I say this, cause there might be some audience members like, Whoa, what are you talking about? Right. And the reason why, and again, reflecting on my experiences and hearing like the technicians that are in my classroom, everything is just pretty much like the traditional way of doing controls. You know, you, you have a device that is being, you know, trigger by say a moving part that's going to provide a signal. It goes into the PLC and the PLC is going to take over duty automation. Meaning you don't have to have this massive, you know, bundles of wires. You can basically run everything from the field to the control panel and then using addressing, which is the slick thing. You can move things around, right? Because all the field devices are there. You can go to the field device, replace it, but you don't have to replace all the wiring, just the device. Yeah. And then you can do a quick test and then you see it. So now we're talking about using embedded controllers like the Arduino. And this is kind of a segue into what I've been doing with my articles on control.com, open PLC.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: What is that? Now that's a pretty slick platform to learn about programming PLCs. And the way the Optive was evolved, I'm not saying it was like looking at what the creator of open PLC did, but they knew like we have a platform that most people know about, meaning the Arduino, they know how to program it, but we're going to get into this industrial space because it is a booming area related to automation. We have the expertise to manufacture the boards. You know, they have their Protina, you know, machine control platforms. But now they're saying, let's really get into that industrial control space by making a controller that has the same method of termination, terminal block, and you can use ladder diagram programming. And now we can really, you know, capture that market. It's easy. It's small. You know, it's slim. And there you have it. Okay. So that's kind of like the business aspect. Let's look at that market because it's booming. But see, the secret sauce is, like I said, you can add the artificial intelligence. You know, they got tiny, you know, machine learning. You can put that on there and now you can transform it. PLCs, it's still, it's still, put it this way. It's proprietary. Mm-hmm. Because we're talking about an open architecture with the Arduino, right? I mean, when they came up with it, it's like, hey, you could make your own Arduino. Just don't call it Arduino.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Which is a great thing for makers, right? And you got all these different businesses that are actually developing these shields, which is great. So that's where the line of demarcation is. It's like looking at the true innovators versus we just need to, you know, stick to tradition because tradition works. But if you're going to be competitive, you have to cross that other side, which Arduino is really challenging, say, maybe the Rockwell Automation, Allen Bradley, PLCs that are General Electric or, you know, Mitsubishis or Omrons, okay? Because they have these small little form factor controllers. Guess what? Arduino came out with one. And I think Raspberry Pi is looking at coming up with their own industrial controller. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, one thing that I do think about is like when I've talked to people in industrial, like some of the other folks that I know in like factory settings and stuff like that, they are diehard. They are like diehard Allen Bradley or diehard, you know, whatever the other brands are, right? And like, so that's another potential, not that that's insurmountable, but it does seem like, and each of those kind of has their own little special flavors and catalogs and ways that they interoperate with other things.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's the battle. I can remember this was by accident. I had a S7, I think it was like a 1200 series little PLC. Okay. And it dropped. I'm going to try to remember how it dropped, but when it dropped, I said, oh, well, let me see what's inside of it. There's the engineering, the Mac, right? There it is. There it is. Yep. What's inside of it? So I opened it up and I looked at the logic board. Well, they had their own specific, you know, mic controller. It might've been an ASIC or something like that because they had a Siemens part number. Sure. But with that said, it was like, man, you could put an Arduino in this plastic case. You can use a 24 volt power supply. You can put all the, you know, the optocouplers, the transient suppressions to protect the IO, but there's the POC. There's like nothing spectacular. I was thinking like, wow, it's got to be like industrialized.

Chris Gammell: There's still pins on the chip. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I thought it was going to be industrialized. No, it's like, this looks like an Arduino.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So it's the, if you understand like the, the, the specifications of a PLC, one of the big aspects is, is 24 volts. And you know, the current might be at a max like five.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But then you have to look at the inputs because the inputs, you know, they're switching current. So you got to protect and you use, you know, basically you use optocouplers, right? Because you got 24 volts. Well, you know, the poor microcontroller is five volt or 3.3 volt compliant. It can't handle that. So the way you do is you put that interface in this case, an optocoupler 24 volts input side, and then the output is going to have, you know, basically you got the, your open collector transistor. That's going to provide the low voltage, low current that the microcontroller is like, okay, now I can, you know, deal with this. And it's the same thing on the outputs. You got optocouplers and you just do the reverse, right? You pull everything high, you source it, and, you know, you got maybe like if you're doing AC, you got triacs. So now you can drive the triac with, you know, the low side, meaning being controlled by a microcontroller because the optocouplers like the interface and, you know, you're off to the races from that point.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yeah, yeah. So then how does this, how does the, so like you, like you're saying, like the, the microcontroller that's running in there is, is possible to be a wide variety of microcontrollers. Then OpenPLC is a software that basically, is that compiling like ladder logic down to something that can be used on a lot of commercial boards?

Dave Jones: Yeah, you, yeah, it's pretty fascinating. It will, it'll actually compile to a binary file.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: But what gets generated out of that is you have, like, it's, it's based off of the IEC spec, IEC stands for International Electrical Technical Commission. So it's a European standard and the, the specific standard for PLC programming is the IEC 6113 1-3 functional programming languages. So there's five functional programming languages and some of them are graphical, some of our tech. So you have the ladder diagram, you have the functional block diagram, or which is basically graphical. Then you get into some kind of like Pascal-ish programming structure where, and that's the key word, it's, it's structured text. Okay. Okay. And then you have like kind of a, an assembly version of programming and that's the instruction list. Okay. And then you have a sequential function chart, which really gets into the behavior of, like you mentioned about sequencing and, you know, it's, it's tasks, it's timing, it's time-based diagram. Okay. So that's, that's graphical. So now with that spec, again, the creator who, who did this, actually, I'm trying to remember his name, but he did it for his PhD in cybersecurity. Actually, he went to Huntsville, University of Huntsville, Alabama, and he got a, you know, degree in cybersecurity, but he, I think he did it on control systems, right? Because, you know, espionage. So he came up with this platform called-

Chris Gammell: They do have a, they have a village at, at DEFCON for PLC hacking as well. So, yeah, there you go. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Did you see the movie called Black Hats with, uh, Chris Hemsworth?

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that was a good movie.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I'll check it out.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that was a good movie because MIT grad, right? It's like the MIT people always get in these movies, but, uh, they had to tap into a service because he was doing some nefarious hacking and they, you know, cut a deal like, hey, we need your help while hacking. And it was about, you know, basically using PLCs, they put a virus and they were able to shut down this plant because this plant was allowing them to gain access to some type of natural resource and they can make money off of it. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well, wasn't that like the Stuxnet thing too? Didn't that eventually when it hopped through like the Stux worm, like got all the way through all those different USB keys and then into the Iran controllers? Those were, those are industrial controllers as well, I think.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. They're industrial controllers. So with that, that was the whole plot of, you know, learning about cybersecurity and plant the machine to machine control technologies. But yeah, the open POC platform is just that it was his way of like, it's open source. Well, not open source, but it's open to the community. Like, you know, the architecture, you see all these files being generated, but actually it'll compile down to a binary file that will go into, in this case, the bot, you know, like an at mega 328. They actually, he's got a series of different microcontrollers. The ESP 32 platform is in there. I think he's got like the RP 2040 and he keeps adding more and more. Right. Yeah. And it's just like, now you can make your own PLC. So I use that to do the introduction to programmable logic. Oh, nice. And I'm showing them how to program. And that's where the control automation or control.com article, I did a pitch like, Hey, this is some good stuff. Would you be interested? You know, and there was more to the proposal. And, uh, the, uh, the editor of content already came back and said, yeah, this is great. Cause it's perfect timing. He said that Massimo Bassani was there and he talked about Arduinos and PLCs. So he was giving them a clue, like, Hey, we're going to move into this sphere and it's perfect. And he was really like looking for the market because, you know, ET tech, that's the marketing venue. But the magazine, you know, the website is called control.com. They talk about industrial controls and circuits and systems and all that. So when I did that pitch, he's like, great. And I've been writing articles. I think this is my sixth article that I'm doing and doing a series.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We'll definitely link that in the, uh, the comments below and the show notes below. So there's a lot of great articles there. That's awesome.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Dr. Don, you do a lot of stuff here. Uh, so you, I mean, it sounds like a long career and you've, you've been, you've been kind of going across, across the spectrum here. We are a little bit past an hour, but what, what else, what else do you want people to know about you or things that you've done that people should check out?

Dave Jones: Well, here's my marketing ploy. I have a new book coming out next.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's called the M5 stack electronic blueprints book. And that, that's a fun part of uses the M5 stack.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh.

Dave Jones: Both versions, the touchscreen and the non-touchscreen, but I got a lot of projects that show people how to interface with Arduinos, uh, snap circuits. So if you want to get your kids involved in it, they can learn about electronics. That's great. You know, wifi devices, all kinds of cool things. So that's coming out. Uh, well, you know about the conference yet. I got a conference that I'm going to be doing a workshop.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Awesome. I was going to say we will have a link to the pre-order if the, if you, if the M5 stack book sounds good to you. Blueprint. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have the link to the pre-order. That's great. That's great. I didn't, I didn't even realize this is, this is like the book tour. You're on the book tour right now, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one thing they say is like, make sure you start promoting your book. So, and I got a webinar, design news webinar coming up. It's on, uh, what is it? I'm trying to remember what it is, but it's like March and I'm going to be talking about, Ooh, I think it's, yeah. No red and how you can use that with a ESP 32.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice. Okay. I think that's the topic.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one too. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I really like that as like a control diagram. Well, not, not, not quite like how we're talking about PLCs, but like as a way to kind of show data flow when you're sending stuff up to the cloud, it can be really, really useful.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I got three, I got a total of four. So that's the first one. And I got three others that are coming, you know, later on in the year. So yeah. Never dull moment. Yeah. Never dull moment.

Chris Gammell: That's great, man. You were, you were everywhere and everywhere is a way that people can, can, uh, learn a lot of can, uh, learn a lot from you there. One question about the, the design news thing that you do. So you do these design news DigiKey courses and they're like continue education credit. Is that like, uh, can those, those can go towards like a PE, uh, style, like CEC, like for professional engineer?

Dave Jones: Well, I triple E is involved in that. So the way it works is you got to participate in each of the, the sessions that, you know, you sign up. And I guess over a period of time, when you get that, I don't know what the magic number is, but when you get this magic number, you will get a certificate from the I triple E saying, you know, you, you met the requirements to receive the certificate. And, and the, and the cool thing about that, Chris was one of the participants that took some of my classes and the guy that got me involved in the, uh, embedded online, his name is Jacob Benedico. We're both Michigan years. Yeah. Yeah. The guy is sharp.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: He, uh, the, the, the, the guy who got his I triple E, uh, certificate, he, he did a LinkedIn post and he said, Hey, I want to thank, you know, Don and, and Jacob for, you know, the wonderful classes that they, they, they, uh, put on. So that, that's what it means, you know, for me, just one learner and an inspiration. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And speaking of Jacob, so you will be also at the online embedded conference. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Doing the ESP, uh, uh, 32 IO primer. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Great. Yeah. And that's, that's another good one. So that's, uh, that's a free, free conference. People can basically sign up for that. It's an all online and I think it's in April of this, this coming year. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, there are a lot of great places to go and check out your stuff. Dr. Don, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. And, uh, I, I hope to have you back on and hear more about your, your, your fun things you're working on.

Dave Jones: Definitely look forward to bringing some more fun stuff that I do around the lab here. So yeah. And at, at Jefferson state. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Of course. Yeah. All right. We'll see you soon.

Dave Jones: All right. Yep. Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. We'll be right back.