• Alexander Olsen

    Hardware engineer

    M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Showcase

Here are some of my professional and spare time projects, plus details on what I do

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ABAX Hardware

My work at ABAX includes:

  • Designing the circuit boards for the ABAX6 product line, ABAX RFID2 and ABAX MINI.

  • The enclosures for all 4 ABAX6 variants, ABAX RFID2 and MINI2 (as seen in the picture). Design concept and CAD.

  • Partisipated in the ABAX4, ABAX5 and ABAX MINI 1 and 2 firmware code.

All products except ABAX RFID2 and the ABAX6U variant, are either IP67 or IP69K rated. Most of them are ultrasonically welded, but some are snapped together.

The enclosures also includes light conductor/pipe parts and rubber parts.

The circuits are designed for ultra low power operation, for long battery life time. The lifetime varies by use, but the optimal lifetimes varies from 2-6 years depending on the products. Most antennas on the boards are custom PCB antennas.

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Low footprint high power LoRa remote

Remote with 2 buttons that broadcasts at 20dBm using a coin cell. A large capacitor bank (under the board, behind the battery) is charged once the button is pressed. A RGB LED blinks yellow until it is charged, then it blinks green on successful packet delivery. Blinks red if it did not get a response.

Skillset

My main skills for developing hardware products are:

 

Circuit design & PCB layout

  • Updated on the latest products available to include in design

  • Ultra low power consumption

  • Very compact designs

  • Optimal designs for minimum EMI

  • Rigid-flex PCB design

  • Design for automated in-line board level tests

  • RF design

    • PCB antenna designs (multi-band)

    • Matching network / tuning

    • Active tuning networks (aperture)

    • Active and passive efficiency measurements

  • Specialities for Internet of Things

    • Energy harvesting (PV and Piezo electric sources)

    • BLE connectivity

    • GSM/LTE connectivity

    • Propietary UHF

    • NFC / RFID

    • Advanced GNSS positioning


Mechanical design

  • Plastic injection molded and CNC routed enclosures

  • Designing a space efficient rugged design, around an eletrical assembly, that is both easy to produce and assemble

  • Sketching design suggestions, that stake holders can choose from

  • Cost efficient solutions for mass production

  • Ordering and managing high volume tooling

  • Prototyping using 3D-printing or silicone molds

  • IP67 and IP69K certified designs


Firmware development

  • Controllers I have the most experience with:

    • nRF52832

    • ATMEGA328

    • nRF52840

    • nRF52820

    • STM32F405

  • Very memory efficient code

  • Ultra low power execution

  • Experience with RTOS, like Contiki and FreeRTOS

  • DSP

  • BLE connectivity

  • FOTA upgrade, over BLE and GSM/LTE