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Custom Instrumentation EngineeringAn Interview with Brian Millier

CJ: Tell us about yourself and your work as an instrumen-tation engineer.

BRIAN: I work in Halifax, the capital city of Nova Scotia,on the east coast of Canada. I’m fortunate in being able tocommute a short 30 minutes to my home, which is situ-ated on a great lake-front property. My wife was the chieftech in a small X-Ray department, and we have no chil-dren. This has afforded me lots of time to pursue my hob-bies of electronics, computer programming, and carpentry.We both enjoy music, and I’ve built a nice recording stu-dio in my basement where we record a lot of musictogether—strictly amateur, though. I’ve been seriouslyinvolved in electronics since I was 10 years old (when myfather started buying me electronics kits). There wasnever any doubt in my mind that I would pursue electron-ics as a career, although I did make some career compro-mises to remain in Nova Scotia, which is definitely notan electronics center.For close to 30 years now, I’ve been an instrumentationengineer in the Chemistry Department at Dalhousie Uni-versity. My job involves designing, building, and program-ming custom instrumentation that’s used in the depart-ment, as well as maintaining the many complex instru-ments, such as NMR spectrometers and mass spectrome-ters, in the department.

CJ: How long have you been reading Circuit Cellar?

BRIAN: I’d like to say right from the start, but thatwouldn’t be true. However, I built my first “personalcomputer” in the late ’70s and all of us “geeks” read Byteand Kilobaud magazines back then. Byte’s most interest-ing technical articles were written by Steve Ciarcia. Asthe PC field became “commercialized,” Byte followedthat trend and Steve’s design articles disappeared. It was-n’t until 1993 when I noticed a copy of Circuit Cellar ona newsstand that I realized that Steve had started up anew magazine some years back.

CJ: What was the first technology that caught your attentionand excited you about electronics and electrical engineering?

BRIAN: For me, that’s going a long way back! Growing up

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

as a teenager in the late ’60s, rock music was very influ-ential to me. You had to play your vinyl records on yourparent’s big console hi-fis in the living room, or listen to atransistor radio. So, I started building powerful stereoamplifiers and loudspeakers, which I sold to college stu-dents in residence. I was in a rock band for a while, andbuilt most of the PA equipment that we used, since wewere too young to be able to afford commercial equip-ment. So, I guess I would have to say that analog audiocircuits using vacuum tubes were my first big influence.

CJ: How long have you been working with “embeddedtechnology,” and what was your first MCU-based design?

BRIAN: When I started at Dalhousie in 1980, even thoughI worked in a large Chemistry Department, there wasonly one DEC MINC-11 minicomputer (a scientific ver-sion of DEC’s PDP-11) in the whole department. The uni-versity computer center had several large mainframes, ofcourse. I soon started designing microprocessor-based cir-cuitry to interface our existing scientific instruments tothe newly introduced IBM PC computers—thereby replac-ing the analog readouts and strip-chart recorders of theday. The first working “personal computer” I ever built wasan RCA COSMAC ELF, which used an RCA CDP1802microprocessor. However, that was a Popular Electronicsproject designed by Joseph Weisbecker in 1977. My firstMCU-based design was a dual-channel strip-chart recorderreplacement, which had an analog front-end, two AnalogDevices V/F converters for the ADCs, a Texas Instru-ments TMS370 MCU, and used the popular Epson dot-matrix printer for hardcopy. It’s easy to remember thisproject as it was the subject of my first Circuit Cellararticle in 1994.

CJ: Tell us about your training and background.

BRIAN: Everyone knows that Bill Gates and Steve Jobsdropped out of college to later become billionaires. Well,so did I—except for the billionaire part! I chose to attendAcadia University, a small university in the rural areawhere I grew up. I was offered a full university scholarship,which was conditional upon my taking a degree program.

Brian Millier is an instrumentation engineer in the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University inHalifax, Canada. He also runs Computer Interface Consultants. Circuit Cellar published 39 of Brian’sarticles between 1994 and March 2010. In June 2010, I interviewed him about topics ranging from hisfirst experience with an MCU to his most current project. — C. J. Abate, Editor-in-Chief

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What I really wanted to pursue was Electrical Engineer-ing, and Acadia only offered a pre-engineering diploma inconjunction with Nova Scotia’s Technical College. So, Ienrolled in the BSc degree program and concurrently tookthe engineering courses needed to earn my Engineeringdiploma. However, having been doing electronics since Iwas 10 years old, there was very little electronics infor-mation in any of the courses that I took during those fouryears that I hadn’t already learnt on my own. Just beforetransferring to the NS Technical College to complete myEngineering degree, I was offered a great position at Gen-eral Electric. I was dying to start a “real job,” so I tookthat position and never completed the Engineering degree.Looking back, I believe that GE is arguably the best-man-aged company in the world (the famous Jack Welsh wasCEO when I started), and I believe I benefited greatly bystarting out my career with them.

CJ: You’ve written 39 articles for Circuit Cellar. How doyou choose which technology to focus on during anygiven month?

BRIAN: Working in an academic environment, I have alot of freedom when it comes to choosing how I am goingto attack a design solution. I’ve never been “married” toany particular MCU family, and have switched amongstnumerous MCUs over the years—generally favoring thosethat have the best development boards and software avail-able at any given time. Since I started out doing analogcircuitry and later moved on to digital/computer circuits,I am particularly interested in what is referred to asmixed-signal designs. Since much of the measurementdone in a university research environment requires highresolution/accuracy, I tend to focus on innovative mixed-signal ICs from such companies as Analog Devices, Burr-Brown (now TI), and Maxim. While I never have to worryabout saving a penny here and there on components, aswould be the case in commercial manufacturing, I dotake a lot of pride in designing the most cost-effectiveproject that I can, given the custom nature of the workthat I do.

CJ: Many of your projects are solution-oriented—meaning,you have a problem or a particular need in the university’schemistry lab and you use your engineering skills todesign solutions and handy applications. Do you activelyseek out problems to solve, or do you simply design solu-tions on an as-needed basis?

BRIAN: When I started working at Dalhousie, most all ofmy work involved computer interfacing of researchinstruments. Since the faculty were really only familiarwith the mainframe computer facility, I was very proac-tive in promoting the use of PC computers in theresearch labs by designing whatever interface circuitry Icould to promote that goal. At that time, I spent about50% of my time repairing all of the electronics equipmentin the labs, so I am quite oriented towards problem-solving.

Currently, I am predominantly involved in designing low-cost instruments for our undergraduate teaching labs.While there is an increased focus on undergraduate teach-ing here at Dalhousie, I also see a decline in interest inthe teaching lab part of the program. I strongly believe inthe value of the “hands-on” experience gained in theselabs, and do my best to buck that decline in interest bydesigning and building as much low-cost instrumentationfor these teaching labs as I have time for.

CJ: Let’s consider two designs that you use at home: asmart power bar for energy conservation (Circuit Cellar230, 2009) and the bench-top “Serial Sidekick” design fortroubleshooting serial data communication issues (CircuitCellar 159, 2003). Do you build devices like these simplybecause you love designing? Or perhaps you’re driven todevelop cost-effective alternatives to off-the-shelf solutions?

BRIAN: I have been a very staunch believer in the impor-tance of energy conservation for many years now. Howev-er, as an electronics enthusiast, I have to admit to havingan awful lot of “gadgets” around the house which draw“phantom power.” The smart power bar was my attemptto reduce the amount of “phantom power” that myTV/home entertainment center drew continuously. Whileit is only a small step, it does work very well at accom-plishing this. Since many of my projects involve serial datalinks of come kind, it was handy to have a device thatcould “sniff out” communications problems when I wasdealing with ICs that were new to me. I can’t afford to buya lot of specialized test equipment at work, so the SerialSidekick was a low-cost solution to that problem.

CJ: In 1994, the time of your first Circuit Cellar article,what technologies excited you the most? And what abouttoday?

BRIAN: At that time, microprocessors had just evolvedinto really useful devices. For me, the big breakthroughcame when microprocessors became MCUs (i.e., they con-tained their own program and RAM memory onboard, aswell as a UART and some parallel I/O ports). Since I wasdoing custom work, most of my designs had to be hand-wired using Vector boards and wire-wrap wire. These newMCUs greatly reduced the amount of hand-wiring needed.Like anyone involved in digital electronics at that time, Iwas also very excited with the advent of UV-erasable EEP-ROM program memory, as it made the chore of firmwareprogramming much less of a hassle. Also, at about thesame time, the cost and availability of pretty decentmixed-signal ICs such as ADCs and DACs improvedmarkedly.Today, I am less excited about any particular hardwaretechnology than I am about advances in software/firmware.The development tools available to designers today arevastly better than what we had when I started out in thebusiness. I’ll give you a few examples.One, for mixed-signal applications today, it is quite

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reasonable to expect to be able to design a complete “systemon chip” (SoC) using Cypress Semiconductor’s PSoC line.The chip hardware is very sophisticated—particularly thenewer PSoC3 and 5 models—but this would be a mootpoint were it not for some extremely powerful develop-ment software that Cypress makes available: the PSoCDesigner/Creator programs. However, the existence ofthese very user-friendly programs would not be that use-ful to young designers if they cost thousands of dollars topurchase, which is often the case. Cypress provides theseprograms free, making it possible for young designers tocreate powerful designs with very little expense up-front. Two, the ARM family of MCUs is likely to become thepredominant MCU family in the future. While manycompanies are embracing it, I have to give credit to NXP(formerly Philips) for their “mbed” project. Here they’vetaken a powerful ARM MCU, placed it on a small PCBwith a DIP40 pinout, and added a “magic” custom chip tomake the board look to your PC like a USB flash drive.You don’t need a chip programmer; you just drag and dropyour object code file to the mbed “flash drive,” and ittakes care of the programming automatically. I prefer toprogram in Basic, but acknowledge that most MCUs noware programmed in C. With the mbed system, you needn’tbuy and configure a C compiler. A powerful C compiler,preconfigured for the ARM Cortex chip mounted on thembed module, is available free “on the cloud.” By tappinginto their really active user-group forum, you can be

designing great projects in a short time, with virtuallyzero start-up costs.

CJ: What was your most well-received article?

BRIAN: Judging by the amount of reader feedback Ireceived, my most popular article was “Using a T6963Controller-Based Graphics LCD panel” back in 2000 (Cir-cuit Cellar 125). Many projects revolve around an inexpen-sive graphics LCD readout, and the electrical design andthe graphics language I incorporated into the firmwarewere quite popular at the time. It was also the first signifi-cant project I did using the Atmel AVR series of MCUs,which continue to be my favorite MCU for most of mycurrent projects.

CJ: What project or projects are you working on rightnow?

BRIAN: After 45 years in the business, I am now quicklyapproaching retirement. Like many people in a similar situ-ation, I guess I suffer from a bit of “been there, done that”attitude. To combat this, I’ve recently become interested incomputer numeric control (CNC), which is essentially thecomputer control of machining tools. I have always person-ally done much of the panel/cabinet work on many of myprojects, both at work and as a hobby. Therefore, it seemedworthwhile to investigate a computer-controlled milling

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machine that could do this sort ofwork. Since I also like carpentry, Ithought a computerized router wouldbe nice to have. I’ve just finishedbuilding a CNC router that will dolight aluminum panel work, as wellas work with wood and plastic. Find-ing suppliers for all of the specializedmechanical parts, and building themachine from scratch, was truly chal-lenging and rewarding. I am hoping topublish my experience in a future Cir-cuit Cellar article. While this is most-ly a mechanical project, I alsodesigned a remote control pod for myrouter, which will provide some elec-tronics content to the article.

CJ: Hatching any other plans?

BRIAN: Well, I am really a neophytewhen it comes to CNC machining,which I just described. I expect it willtake me some time to become proficientat it. For that matter, I am scratchingmy head trying to think of neat thingsto make with the machine at this point.I am just now finishing off a wholeseries of small instruments I designedfor our new Material Sciences teachinglab. So, it may be six months or sobefore “hatching season” starts again!

CJ: Tell us about Computer InterfaceConsultants.

BRIAN: Some of the circuits I’vedesigned have been mentioned inresearch papers written by our facultymembers. So, I sometimes receiverequests from professors at other univer-sities to build them such devices. I

started Computer InterfaceConsultants about 15 yearsago so I could bill them forsuch projects. Similarly, Ido some repair work on sci-entific instruments forother institutions throughComputer Interface Con-sultants. In reality, the“consultants” part of thename is not really applica-ble, as I seldom do any con-sulting work per se. It madefor a more impressive-sounding name, however.

CJ: You have been involved in severalCircuit Cellar contests over the years.What is the attraction?

BRIAN: Working in a technical supportposition in academia, there isn’t toomuch competitive pressure. Nor isthere any performance measurementsystem in place, or merit pay, per-se.By entering Circuit Cellar contests, Ihad a chance to compete with mypeers, which I found quite rewarding.

I’ve had reasonably good success—mybest showing being my First Prize proj-ect (Multilab) in the Zilog “Flash ForCash” contest. Win or lose, I still gainvaluable experience designing withMCUs apart from the ones that I rou-tinely use. (Plus it forces me to pro-gram in C occasionally!)

CJ: Is there anyone in particular youwould like to acknowledge for havinghelped you in your work?

BRIAN: Like many people who becameinterested in “personal computers” intheir infancy, I became overly obsessedwith them in the early days. I have tothank my wife for putting up with mefor all the time I spent on computersback then. On a more technical level, Iam indebted to Mark Alberts who wrotethe BASCOM-AVR compiler, which Ihave used for all of my AVR-based proj-ects over the past 10 years. He has per-sonally responded very promptly to allof my questions over the years.Firmware is a big part of such projects,and his support has been invaluable. I

Photo 1—Brian’s latest CNC project

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