Glorified Plumbing

Happy New Year everyone!

New Year’s Resolutions were a popular thing in Britain when I was a kid. I gave up on them a few decades ago. Still, we all find a time when we re-assess what’s going on, clean up and plan ahead. It may be on a calendar; New Year, Solstice, Birthday, or some other significant event. This is as good a time as any for me to set some goals.

I’ve just wrapped up a fantastic year. I started it while on a sabbatical, writing a book I’ve always wanted to. That was followed by a chance to work on some fun projects with an old friend, joining them and investing sweat equity in their startups. I had the schedule and budget to travel to Britain to see family, friends, and steam trains and ships.

It was also a personally challenging year. I had a health scare, we lost a dear relative, and another is fighting cancer.

Highlights of 2024

You would think a UK trip would be the high point. Sure, I got to visit The Rollright Stones, a chance find on the drive to my nephew’s wedding. These are the actual stones that Steve Winwood sang about! I saw the SS Great Britain, Stephenson’s Rocket (original and working replica,) and the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. I even rode the railway featured in “Gallant Old Engines” by the Rev Awdry on Britain’s oldest preservation line. It was a great trip.

I think being invited to join a startup as a co-founder was the actual high, though, both on a personal and professional level. This is a result of a long-standing personal and professional relationship. I’ve known the founder for 30 years — he was initially my boss and mentor but has since become a close family friend. Over the years, I’ve worked with him at several companies.

Sure, we didn’t rock the world, but we did come up with some simple, innovative solutions for a real-world problem. We documented them, filing provisional patent applications, writing elevator pitches and white papers, and documenting implementation plans. This was bootstrapping in the most fundamental sense. Our only investment was time. Sure, you can’t get large-scale investment until you have a proof of concept (PoC) model, but you can’t get a PoC until you have the cash to build it. We took it as far as we could to court potential partners. Since I was the principal technical advisor for the project, the business plan put the CTO title alongside my name.

As a technical guy, not a business person, my effort has dropped to a minimal level now while the rest of the team looks at how to finance the next step.

Intent for 2025

There are four major plans for this year.

• Get a new job
• Develop hardware debug widgets
• Resume monthly blogging
• Finish the book

The New Job

Enjoying working on personal projects is fun, but it doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. I started my job search on New Year’s Eve.

Job shopping is always an interesting challenge. With seniority, finding an appropriate roll gets harder. Twice, I’ve been a staff engineer, and both have aged out on my resume. A lot of start-ups I worked for use the generic “Sr Firmware Engineer” badge.

At times, my role has focused on FW engineering for low-level drivers, enabling critical functionality within innovative products. It would not necessarily be the most glorious work, but I’d be on a team making a really cool product. These roles have allowed me insight into assorted industries.

Other times, I’ve been the tech lead and even FW architect for major sub-systems such as battery management and OTA FW Update. At one company, I was the system architect for a whole product range. I got to specify the hardware, busses, FPGA gateware, firmware, and all APIs. My title was still only Sr FW Eng!

My résumé was polished last year. The newest activity listed is “Interim CTO/Co-founder.” The position before my sabbatical was “Sr Software Engineer.” My target is something in between.

There is one last part to job shopping. Given my mother-in-law’s condition, I want to be “on hand”; we’ve already had several trips to the ER. Living in the same town and working from home, I’ve been able to respond immediately. My last commute could be up to 90 minutes at peak time. I think you all appreciate how I’m reluctant to take on that burden at this time.

Developing a Modular Debug Toolkit

Over the years, I’ve built small, often fragile test modules to streamline debugging tasks like splicing signals or accessing extra test points on serial interfaces. A recent RS485 project sparked the idea of creating a modular debug toolkit. I’ll be designing the boards myself using KiCad, following reference designs from datasheets and application notes, with guidance from an EE mentor. Once complete, I plan to share these designs as open-source hardware on GitHub, inviting collaboration and feedback. If there’s enough interest, I may even explore small-scale production to make these tools more widely available.

Blogging

I have always enjoyed writing. I used to have several pen pals in my student days. I got involved in online communities, where I started blogging and writing short stories.

When I left my previous employers, I surrendered my engineering notebooks and lost access to my contributions on their wikis. Later, I realized I needed that information but could no longer retrieve it. That experience inspired me to create a personal record of the non-proprietary lessons I had learned. Recognizing that others might benefit as well, I started this blog to share my knowledge with engineers globally.

I have found that my most significant engagement has come from some trivial posts on a niche corner of LinkedIn. Personal posts, such as those about managing a sabbatical, resonated well with readers. Another success was a detailed technical review of a datasheet diagram, which sparked a significant interest.

Trying to find where to publicize my posts and what content is valued most is an interesting problem. I think I’m getting there. The next couple of posts will return to technical adventures, being about my adventures with the RS485 project and my forays into KiCad.

Finish the book

One of my big personal projects last year was drafting a book. I dedicated three months to building a solid framework for a book — a pocket guide to debugging serial interfaces, starting with SPI and I2C. The idea was to expand into other interfaces if the book found success.

I started to add paragraphs, then chapters, to include primer information. As the feature creep increased, I realized I had a second book, “How to Debug Embedded Systems,” taking shape within the first. I plan to split the project into two distinct books and focus on completing at least one.

Writing is most effortless when you can focus on it. As a weekend project, it’s a challenge—losing momentum and context with every break. If I’m honest, I’d love to spend the next 12 months fully immersed in this endeavor. The question is: how do I make that happen?

Best Foot Forward

The road ahead promises to be an exciting mix of job searching, diving deeper into electronic engineering, and exploring opportunities in publishing. If you have advice on any of these areas, I’d love to hear it.

Balancing these ambitions with the realities of caregiving will be its own challenge. To those facing similar circumstances, I send my support and best wishes.

The blog will continue to evolve with technical posts and reflections on the engineer’s journey. What topics would you like to see covered? Your input would be invaluable.

Whatever 2025 brings, I look forward to tackling it with curiosity, resilience, and a sense of adventure!

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All photographs by the author.