Madison Section Newsletter

• 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?:  To arrange for a ride contact Chuck Cowie (cjcowie@ieee.org), Tom Kaminski (tjkaminski@ieee.org) or Dave Jenson (dljensen@ieee.org).
  
  Carpool Pick Up: Three drivers who can take a total of 10 passengers are planning to leave from the south side of the Sears Auto Center at the southeast corner of West Towne Mall. Chuck Cowie can pick up an additional 3 passengers between East Washington at Stoughton Road and West Towne Mall. Those who would like a ride are requested to email one of the above contacts so we will know who to expect. We plan to be ready to pick up passengers at West Towne Mall at 2:15 PM and leave at 2:30 PM.
  
  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.
  

• Event:  Lunchtime Section Meeting
• Date/Time: Monday, September 25th,  from12:00 PM until 1:30 PM
  NOTE the date/time change from typical section meetings!
• Speaker: Mark Schulze,  VP, BSNF
  
• Location: 
      Sequoya Library Branch, Room B
      Carpool from West Towne Mall at 2:00 PM
      Madison,  WI
• RSVP: Please Register at the IEEE Madison Section event page.

Topic:  Most of the world has electrified is main line railroads, but the United States has not. Why is that when we have freight traffic densities higher than many foreign nations. I will discuss the economics of electrification from the viewpoint of the BNSF railroad and the prospects for electrification in the future.

Speaker:  Mark Schulze is vice president, Safety, Training and Operations Support, for BNSF Railway. In this role, he leads the System Safety and Technical Training teams and is responsible for corporate technical research and development. Schulze was named to his current position on June 1, 2005. He had previously served as general manager of BNSF Railway’s Texas Division and was named to that position in May 2004 after serving as vice president and chief sourcing officer since November 2002. Prior to being named to the sourcing post, Schulze had been assistant vice president, Consumer Products Marketing, since early 2001. Schulze joined the railroad in October 1990 as a corporate management trainee. He progressed through the company, holding financial positions in Coal and the Treasury department, and became manager, Finance, in 1995. In 1997, he was promoted to director, Operating Budget and Measurement, in the Finance department. He joined the Marketing department in 1998 as general director, Business Unit Support.

• Meeting Reviews
  

  The August ECN-EMB-018 Joint Meeting  featured a talks by Tom Kaminski and Dennis Bahr on the use of Raspberry Pi SoCs for Audio and medical instrumentation. Tom discussed the use of the Raspberry Pi 3 in several projects, including an audio player, a sound level meter, and a Sonic Boom monitoring system.  Dennis showed his low-power, battery operated Raspberry Pi Zero unit aimed at portable medical instrumentation. The biggest difference between the two units was the programming approach. Tom primarily used the Python programming language on the Raspbian flavor of Linux for his projects, while Dennis used a "bare metal" approach.  Dennis dug into the means needed to compile a simple "C" program and load it into the Pi Zero.  His project boots very quickly and runs with little power while Tom's approach requires the OS to boot first.  Dennis is now working on figuring out how to use the powerful graphics pipeline in the Pi Zero to do Infinite Impulse Response filtration. A copy of Tom's presentation is available at this link.  You may email Dennis at bahr-at-inexpress.net for more information on the bare metal booting process.
  
  Editorial Note: I was surprised to find out that three members of the IEEE-Madison Executive Committee (Tom Kaminski, Clark Johnson, and Charles Cowie) were all nearby in Western Wyoming for the past Eclipse event on August 21.  A fourth member, Dennis Bahr, viewed the event from southern Missouri.  Tom used a Raspberry Pi outfitted with a camera to produce a time lapse of the event. You may view the video at this .Google Drive link.  He was in Glendo, WY and a picture of his set up for recording the eclipse (along with his daughters and wife) is documented here.
  

• 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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