SparkFun is 20 years previous this yr! We’re fortunate sufficient to have a bunch of staff which were round for over 10 of these years, and we needed to share their reflections on their time right here with you. At present you may be listening to from Pete Lewis.
Inform us about your background.
I’ve worn many hats at SparkFun over the previous 15 years, and I’ve completely loved all of them. It has been each an honor and a privilege to work on such enjoyable and difficult initiatives alongside such great folks. I’m happy with and grateful for the present alternative to work as Senior Engineer!
I principally grew up in Lake Tahoe, NV, the place I gained an excellent appreciation for the outside. After I wasn’t snowboarding or wakeboarding, I used to be constructing, flying, crashing and fixing remote-controlled mannequin airplanes. That is the place I used to be first launched to servos, wiring, batteries and robotics. I used to be fairly hooked on being a maker fairly early on.
I began my faculty training in Huntington Seashore in Southern California. I used to be targeted on music composition and sound engineering. I then hopped over to Cal-State Lengthy Seashore, and continued my common music research but additionally joined the choir and acquired extra into jazz guitar. I then completed up my music diploma with a deal with voice at CU Boulder.
What introduced you to SparkFun?
I had simply completed my music diploma at CU. I used to be taking part in in my band, giving personal guitar classes, and dealing at an artwork gallery. A buddy of mine was working as a mechanical engineer for a brand new electronics firm and he let me know that they wanted meeting technicians. I believed I’d give it a try to was instantly hooked.
What’s your favourite mission you’ve labored on at SparkFun?
That’s a extremely robust query! Whereas working someplace for thus lengthy, you actually can tackle a variety of initiatives. After my first week at SparkFun as an meeting tech, I instantly began designing my very first PCB. I adopted the SparkFun tutorials (on the time, principally simply blog-post type tutorials written by Nathan), and realized methods to use the free model of EAGLE. Along with serving to me format the board and keep away from deadly beginner errors (no floor pour, derp!), the engineers even let me put my design onto an “engineering panel”, so I may get a duplicate of my design without spending a dime – holy cow!
The mission I used to be finally capturing for was to design my very own headphone amp with a limiter inbuilt. I needed to begin considerably easy with simply the op amp to drive my headphones (or extra particularly, in-ear screens). By many late nights of soldering and hacking, I ultimately acquired my headphone amp to work. I then began extra superior audio circuits and created an analog limiter. This was the beginning of what later turned my very own enterprise referred to as, Rock On Audio, specializing in private monitoring sound methods for musicians.
I nonetheless proceed to tinker with audio initiatives. Not too long ago, I designed a digital audio converter board for SparkFun. As with most new product designs, we engineers are fortunate sufficient to get to check out the brand new tech on a mission, and so I instantly needed to make use of this new breakout board in an audio mission. I used it to create a set of headphones with ambient room mics I can use safely whereas taking part in extraordinarily loud drums.
So 15 years after my first op amp design, I’m nonetheless taking part in round with customized audio methods. All the time time to interrupt out the soldering iron and create one thing new!
What is the coolest factor you’ve seen a buyer make with our merchandise?
I actually love the puppetry and robotics that Mario the Maker Magician does. He got here to SparkFun a few years in the past to do a chat on how he creates his stage props and share how he makes use of a variety of SparkFun elements to make his magic occur. After the primary couple minutes of his presentation, I bear in mind considering to myself, “Wow, this is among the coolest methods I’ve seen our tech used!”
Nowadays, Mario is touring the US and even a few of Europe. In the event you get the possibility to see his present, I extremely advocate it. You’ll snicker, cry, and completely be amazed! And in case you are an engineer and/or maker, then you’ll be always considering, “how on earth??!!”.
Who’s SparkFun?
SparkFun is a bunch of people who work to allow engineers, each new and skilled, to get to their design vacation spot quicker. Lots of instances I say, “We offer shortcuts”, however I don’t actually like how the phrase shortcut typically implies that you miss out on one thing.
Sure, there’s a variety of worth in failing your self. And sure, there’s a variety of worth in understanding the nitty gritty particulars of a system, however these two issues can typically be main hurdles towards your finish aim. And even with the instruments we offer, each {hardware} and software program, you’ll absolutely hit loads of hurdles and different issues that may dissipate loads of your dev time.
I wish to suppose that our documentation can even encourage you to go and browse concerning the nitty gritty particulars. I suppose it’s only a stability. You possibly can go as far down any rabbit gap as you would like, and if it sounds fascinating and you’re studying how one thing actually works or the lengthy historical past behind some identified expertise that we take without any consideration, then go for it!
I additionally nonetheless imagine that if you will get your mission up and working quicker, and have a variety of enjoyable in your manner, you’ll finally perceive the basics essential to troubleshoot the loopy unknown points you’ll absolutely face sooner or later throughout hacking.
How has SparkFun developed throughout the time you’ve been right here?
Within the very early days, SparkFun tended to be a useful resource extra for hobbyists. Over the previous 4 or 5 years, now we have been leaning in the direction of working with our B2B (business-to-business) gross sales, partnering with different main firms like DigiKey, Mouser, u-blox. The dangers are a bit greater with the bigger scale initiatives, and a lot extra effort is taken to keep away from errors. This could trigger some initiatives (particularly the extra complicated designs) to have a for much longer growth part. However a little bit extra time up entrance can save a variety of time later.
Even within the early days, we at all times did our greatest to keep away from errors, however typically had been transferring so quick that there wasn’t time to repair one thing correctly, and so a band assist was used and we moved on. It was nice to see SparkX type and proceed to discover new concepts with fast tempo, with a lot much less danger concerned, fearless of failure. That was a significant resurgence of the unique mindset of SparkFun, which was a bit extra like, “throw it on the wall and see what sticks”.
One factor that has remained fixed is that now we have at all times been supporters of the open-source neighborhood. It’s a great factor to see a lot participation in trouble-shooting. With firmware it is vitally seen on GitHub (thanks for all the problems and pull-requests everybody!!), however additionally it is taking place on our boards and with our tech help group.
What’s your favourite spot within the constructing?
The rooftop. Love the view of the mountains. However I additionally like manufacturing. I particularly like watching the pick-n-place machines fly. Oh so many little elements flying onto the paste. Oh, after which there’s the stock. I do like wandering the stock aisles. I assist acquire all of the hard-to-recycle plastics every week, and so I take a giant curler cart by each aisle of stock to empty all of the HTR plastic bins. However whereas I try this, I often peer into a number of the elements bins. I really like seeing all of the buttons, LEDs, wiring harnesses, PCBs. They encourage me to suppose exterior the field and make me wish to create new issues.
What was your first day like?
After rapidly saying good day once more to the man who employed me, Matt Bolton, I used to be instantly assigned a desk and launched to the manufacturing supervisor, Abe. He gave me a folder that included a pair printed out paperwork: an meeting sheet and a invoice of supplies. On the underside of the meeting sheet I learn an extended folder listing path that ended with “SerLCD.brd”. I although, “Hmmm… I ponder what meaning?” He confirmed me over to the stock to seize elements. This consisted of a curler rack with inexperienced bins on it, holding the naked inexperienced PCBs, and a few wire-style shelving with a number of bins and reels. I wasn’t going to do any SMD inhabitants at the moment, that was for day two. For my first construct on my first day, I used to be going to be soldering on the PTH header pins that went into the Serial LCD backpacks.
Abe informed me to deal with getting the pins absolutely inserted and ensure they’re straight and flush. He additionally informed me to ensure all of the solder joints have good fillets. I didn’t know what a fillet was, however as quickly as he described it as a pleasant wanting skateboard quarter pipe, I knew what he was speaking about. I believe I perhaps made twenty or so models, after which acquired to check them. I bear in mind being fairly excited that about half of them labored. The take a look at consisted of holding a fragile little programmer with tiny little pins into place after which working a command in a terminal window to observe a ton of textual content fly throughout the display and search for the phrase “success”. I had by no means used a command terminal earlier than, and I bear in mind feeling fairly excited to see the “code” that makes a program work.
After doing simply twenty boards, my thoughts was already tinkering with concepts on methods to enhance effectivity. I stored a pocket book by my aspect, to simply write down any concepts that got here to thoughts whereas engaged on assemblies. A couple of yr later, I wrote my first weblog submit about an thought I needed to tweak the design to carry the PTH header pins in place completely.
How would you describe SparkFun’s tradition?
Pleasant, useful, , accepting, welcoming.
What’s the greatest a part of the work you do?
Being artistic and innovating new options. It’s at all times superb to me how most new initiatives begin out with a datasheet (which ought to have all of the solutions, proper?), however then you end up having to create a singular resolution from scratch for some unexpected subject that comes up throughout prototyping in your particular use case. Ah the fun of engineering.
So I assume what I’m saying is, I really like the “Aha! I’ve acquired it” moments. Oh yeah, and annoying my boss with scope creep. I really like exploring the infinite potentialities. And yeah, I perceive, we will’t add all of the options to each dev board, however hey, who is aware of the place this board goes for use??!! We should always in all probability escape only a couple extra usable GPIO pins!
What’s your favourite reminiscence of being a SparkFan throughout these previous 20 years? Tell us within the feedback beneath, or inform us on Twitter, Instagram, Fb or LinkedIn.
