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Introducing a New Member

jw0752

I recently met a new friend. He was working on a medical device and was referred to me as someone who could help him find some parts he needed. His name is Von Wolff. As I learned about him and his background in Electronics I felt he would make a good member for the element 14 Forum. I recommended that he join and I was really pleased when he followed through and signed up. Von has for over 30 years been a Design and Verification Engineer in the field of integrated circuit design and function. He has been involved in designing complex ICs for aerospace and commercial industrial applications. He has experience with many of the specialized hardware and software tools used in the design and verification process. He has completed contract projects with over 20 major companies but some of his best stories are from his beginnings working for Walt Disney, designing the ride control systems for Disneyland, Disney World, and the Epcot Center. He also spent a time designing spacecraft monitoring systems for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Lab. Von retired in 2017 and recently he has been working on some bio-electronic projects. I am looking forward to continuing my friendship with Von and I hope my friends on element 14 give him a nice welcome. As we have all experienced, the forum can be a little challenging to figure out and navigate on first contact so any hints and tips will probably be appreciated.

 

John

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  • Thanks for introducing to the element14 community John image

     

    Welcome Von! image Those bio-electronic projects John mentions sound intriguing, hopefully you can share some more about those at some point image

  • in reply to rachaelp

    Thank you rachaelp.  I've been working on a neuromodulation stimulator. The neuromodulation stimulator has been in research at University of Wisconsin at Madison for over 10 years under the name Portable Neuromodulation Stimulato (PoNS). I've been following that development and interpreting a research paper:

     

         https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321174000_The_Portable_Neuromodulation_Stimulator_PoNS_for_Neurorehabilitation .

     

    It's been used to create new neural pathways in patients who suffer from traumatic brain injuries, Parkinson's disease (My condition) and multiple sclerosis. Most of my work prior to retirement has been in the digital realm with very little analog circuit experience. I'm having trouble interpreting the analog interface between the electrodes and the human tissue.  What is your experience with analog circuits?

     

    Thanks again,

    Von

  • in reply to vwolff

    Hi Von,

     

    Interesting document. So sorry to hear about your condition, I too know someone suffering from it.

    Most of the document was understandable (I skimmed over some parts, but tried to understand the sequence of signals and the output circuit), however is there a copy of it with the diagrams, since that would remove a few areas that were slightly unclear.

    I can think of some ideas that could replicate that functionality, but with a bit more flexibility for future tweaks. I'm guessing you're planning to use some microcontroller for the sequence generation? For the output a _lot_ of MOSFETs could be used, or arrays of drivers. A few discrete voltage levels could be available to assign to each channel (just needs a lot more MOSFETs - fortunately they are cheap). But the diagrams from that paper will help, to confirm my understanding.

    Some sketching and simulation would be needed, and some thinking about what additional flexibility is needed.

  • in reply to jw0752

    John,

     

    The signals look good.  I really like the way you were able to modularize the driver onto a single adapter.  Very cool!

     

    Gene

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