Misc: Hello World!

Hi!

In case you're curious who is writing here let me put together some facts about myself.

I was born in 1990, my parents and me were living in a small town in southern Germany. In the neighbouring town (also small) the was a library and they had a book called "Elektronik gar nicht schwer, Bd.2, Experimente mit Wechselstrom". And this (while still being in school) was my first contact with electronics.

Most likely the first thing I ever built was an multivibrator with LEDs and a little battery holder that I glued to an old tie pin and gave it to my father (who wore ties at that time quite often). I should ask him whether he still has that thing...  

However, I spent a lot of my time at the computer back then and so I did more SW stuff (especially php) than HW but there were two topics that was always present: 

• audio technology - I was obsessed with amplifiers and speakers and built some of these myself
• high voltage stuff - at some point I tired to build a DRSSTC but it failed horribly (today I know exactly why)

At the end of my time in school the "what to do for a living" question boiled down to two options:

• becoming a teacher
• becoming an electrical engineer

A little bit of reflection led to the idea that not all pupils might have a good time with me (as I imagined myself clearly being more focussed towards the smarter ones while ignoring the needs of the others) so I opted for the latter.

The university I studied at (KIT) had a department of electrical engineering and information technology with (as far as I remember) 17 separate institutes specialized in different topics. After passing the first three semesters (unfortunately during my time at school I never learned how to learn - so I had to figure this out the hard way...) it became evident that my topic is power electronics & control theory (which essentially is quite equal to developing audio amplifiers - at least in my little world).

So for my bachelor's thesis I developed a (surprise) linear amplifier meant to power an Epstein frame. during that time I basically had a workplace in a lab with some other (already more experienced students) which was a great time of learning for me. After everything was finished my supervisor offered me to be hired as a student assistant so to keep my workplace and  to continue the project. 

I started my day at 8:30 in the lab, went to some lectures during the day and ended at 16:30. And despite the fact that I was just payed for 40h per month I did that every day as this was a very insightful time for me - especially because of the discussions with other students being on a similar path than I was. One guy I'll definitely never forget: Benjamin Weschenfelder

During my master studies it was obligatory to do an internship for some weeks - but for me it was clear that:

• I wanted half a year
• I wanted to do it in my second last semester (the last being blocked for my master's thesis) because I hoped to end up at a company that wanted to hire me afterwards
• I wanted still be close to my small town (which I never really left - and will never leave)
• I wanted to do audio stuff

Yeah and this is how it happened 🙈. 

I spent 6 months at d&b working on a new power supply concept and they wanted to have me back as soon as possible. After doing some 100kW inverter things for my master's thesis (and yes, Bernd, I'll also never forget you) which even culminated in a nice paper I was prepared for audio stuff again.

Shortly after I joined in Nov. 2015 the colleague who was responsible for developing the actual amplifier (we called it "Switch Mode Power Amplifier" - SMPA) inside the 19" amplifier device (which comprised also a SMPS, DSP and other things and was called "amp") left the company and I took over his topics. 

A while later Christoph joined and we were some sort of dream team. While I was juggling fancy ideas all the time he was deep in the details making sure that each part of a circuit was really doing what it is supposed to do. And yes, we both looooove transistor level circuitry. In the five years I spent with d&b I learned so many things. It was mindblowing, fulfilling and entertaining. I truly miss that time.

This was me in 2017 (top) and 2020 (bottom).

And this was our masterpiece: click me.

At d&b we had a little wiki space developers used to document their work and this was something which I loved from the beginning: structuring things and putting them together in a litte page that could be interesting for other as well - maybe written with a little sense of humor.

When COVID struck the company went into emergency mode including shutting down engineering. Something I really was not happy with so I quit - and ended up at instagrid in August 2020. As of now I'm in a kind of double role ("Head of Power & Controls Engineering"):

• half of the time I'm doing something that could be called system engineering - which means that I create concepts of how to split devices into functions and assign them to assemblies including topics such as safety and EMC
• the other half I'm leading a team of SW and HW people who develop the core pieces of the instagrid devices (such as charging/discharging functionality)

At instagrid there is no wiki. But it gives me the same feeling and I still love it. As you might have guessed this is also the reason for this blog. I want to write a bit about the things I'm doing :-)

Cheers,

P.