Madison Section Newsletter

• August ECN Meeting: "SOCs for Audio Use"
  

• Event:  Lunch and Discussion
• Talk: "Raspberry Pi SoCs for Audio Use"
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 10th,  from 11:45 AM until 1:00 PM 
• Speaker: Tom Kaminski.
• Lunch: Bring Your Own
  
• Location: 
      Sector67
      2100 Winnebago Street
      Madison,  WI
• RSVP: Please Register at the IEEE Madison Section event page.
    Non-member guests are always welcome.
  
  Talk:  Inexpensive System-On-a-Chip devices have radically changed the application of digital signal processing to common problems.  The Raspberry Pi has now become the third most prevalent general purpose computer (after the PC and Apple devices) in the world. It can also be used to implement instruments and serve as a system integration device. Tom will discuss what you need to produce a product or a device for home use.  In particular, he will demonstrate several audio devices, the Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi Zero devices, and a RaspberrryPi controlled robot (Turtlebot 3) running ROS.
  
  Speaker:  Tom Kaminski is a retired instructor of Automation from Madison College. He has been working on using SoCs to solve system integration problems for years and has several products using SoCs under development, including a Sonic Boom recorder for use by NASA.

• September LMAG Meeting: "Prairie du Sac Hydro Tour"
  

• Event:  Hydro Plant Tour
• Date/Time: Thursday, September 7th,  from 3:30 PM until 5:00 PM 
• Tour Guide: Amanda Blank, Alliant Energy
  
• Location: 
      Prairie du Sac
      Carpool from West Towne Mall at 2:00 PM
      Madison,  WI
• RSVP: Please Register at the IEEE Madison Section event page.
    The tour is limited to 24 people
• Carpool?:  Please contact Tom Kaminski if you can drive others
  
  Tour:  The planned September Life Member Affinity Group event is a tour of Alliant energy’s Prairie du Sac Hydroelectric plant on Thursday September 7th from 3:30 to 5:00 PM. The plant is located about one mile north of Prairie du Sac. It operates 8 generators with a total capacity of about 31 megawatts. The Prairie du Sac Dam is about 40 feet high and the total water flow rate is about 10,000 cubic feet per second. The 9500 acre Lake Wisconsin is formed by the dam. The plant was put into service in September 1914.
  
  The tour is planned to start with a presentation by Amanda Blank, the plant manager. After the presentation we will have a guided tour of the plant including the generator floor, control room and bus room. Additional personnel will provide information and answer questions about those areas. The tour will conclude with the outdoor features of the facility.
  Carpool transportation to and from the dam is being organized. Due to liomited on-site parking, Tom Kaminski, Chuck Cowie and Dave Jensen have volunteered to take about 9 additional people. The tour can accommodate a maximum of 24 people. Three or four additional volunteers may be needed. Contact Tom Kaminski (tjkaminski@ieee.org) if you can drive. The planned departure time is about 2:00 to 2:45 PM from West Towne Mall.

• Meeting Reviews
  

  The June ECN Meeting  featured a talk by Dominic DiMarco, formerly of MobleIgniter, an IoT startup. He gave us an annotated tour of his professional career as an Entrepreneur, using specific events in his career to make a point about being an Entrepreneur. Dominic stressed that there are many more aspects of the career than being a technologist. He emphasized the need to sell and make connections, encouraging everyone to join LinkedIn instead of Facebook, especially young professionals. Also, he explained that you must "pay it forward" by agreeing to help others as you have been helped. You never know when the connections you make will be needed. He detailed how he used his experience and connections to arrive at his current position. Dominic also discussed his experience trying to produce a product "PooPuppets" (details here) based on printing a comic drawing on a pet refuse bag. He literally called over a hundred US manufacturers and got no response. He posted requirements on a Chinese site and got many responses in days, selecting one for the manufacturing effort.
  
  
  June Section Meeting Talk: Dr. Bandara Gamini gave a talk on collaborative Robots and their use in industry. This new class of robots is now being offered by a number of auomation systems vendors in order to work more cooperatively with humans. There are two very important differences compared to the older generation robots. First, they operate safely without the need for extensive cages or guard space, and second, they are much easier to program. Several examples were given of robot programming where the "programing" consisted of guiding the robots by hand through the operations rather than using a "pendant" for programming.  Also, videos of operating robots showed them slowing down to safe speeds when humans approached, and stopped quickly when humans touched them.
   
  Dr. Gamini also related his experience in working with companies to use these new robots,  Discussions with the audience revealed that in many cases, companies can afford the capital cost of the robots, but do not have the trained manpower to program and maintain them. The new robots might change that dynamic.
  
  
  

• Section Meetings

  The third Thursday of January through May, and September through December is reserved for a meeting to provide recent research, developments, trends and/or innovations in one of our membership's technical areas.

• Life Member Affinity Group

  The first Thursday of January, March, May, September and November is reserved for a meeting on a topic selected from a broad range including such areas as technology, science, history, culture and leisure.

• IEEE-MSN-ECN Networking Meetings

  • Purpose: Presentations, Discussions, networking
  • Date: First Thursday of even-numbered months
  • Time: 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM
  • Location: Sector67, 2100 Winnebago Street (East Side of Madison)
  • Parking: Park in lot or on Winnebago Street.
  • Process: Members are encouraged to make introductions, describe endeavors, and make request for: contacts in target companies, needs, resources.

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