Project Title: Dilution & Mixing Device for Automatic Preparation of Solutions & Standards Dates of Project: 2014 Name of Organization: Federal University of ABC Location: Santo Andre, Sao Paulo, Brazil My Role: Engineering Student
Due to high cost of equipment to execute chemical analysis, the main purpose of the project was creating a good solution with a budgetary price, able to attend small industries in laboratories in Brazil. My role was to develop an electronic device capable to perform six dilution in one session, costing less than $300 and faster than a manual process.
Federal university of ABC is a renowned Brazilian institution with most part of the academic body holding Ph.D.
It was recognized as the unique Brazilian University with impact factor in scientific publications above average according to SCImago Institutions Rankings (Source: http://www.scimagoir.com/). The university and the engineering courses were created in 2005.
The project was the last requirement to get my engineering diploma. I was appointed as team lead engineer for this project. After an intense research, I found a lack in the Brazilian market, where there was not any electronic device able to automatically, with good accuracy and repeatability, prepare some chemical process like chemical solution dilution in a reasonable price/amount for a small company or laboratory.
Project Title: Prix 4 Uno Light Dates of Project: April 2015 to December 2015 Name of Organization: Toledo do Brazil Location: Sao Bernardo Do Campo, Sao Paulo, Brazil My Role: Electronics Engineer
There was a huge market gap for what we called automation scales for supermarkets in Brazil. On this kind of product, the scale must weigh the product properly and calculate the final price based on the item’s information previously stored. Also, the scale must store all the transactions & send this information for a server.You can see bellow one photo about the project after going to production.
Toledo do Brasil is the leading company offering solutions for hardware, software and services for weighting process in Latin America. The company started in 1901, founded in Ohio-USA. Furthermore, in 1932 they have started their operations In Brazil. After few years in 1988, a Brazilian business man bought the company, therefore the company started being 100% Brazilian.
The company has more than 100 different types of solutions, and more than 30 engineers (electrical and mechanical) working in its behalf, and there are more than 1800 employers around Brazil. I was appointed as Electronics Engineer for this project.
I was allotted an opportunity to develop a low-cost scale, but with a variety of electronics resources like a high-speed thermal printer, Ethernet, External SRAM Memory to store more than 10 thousand of products and a new ADC, with a lower cost than the current solution.
Project Title: Switching Source Supply for Customer Industrias Rossi Dates of Project: October 2017 to November 2017 Name of Organization: Future Electronics Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil My Role: Field Applications Engineer
The project’s goals were:
Future Electronics is a global distributor for electronics components. The Headquarter is stablished in Point-Claire, Montreal and the company runs business in more than 44 countries around the world. The company has started the Brazilian office 22 years ago, and has lead the Brazilian market since there. The company has two main divisions, which are Sales and Advanced Engineering Group. The Engineering group is in charge to support customer’s engineers with a variety of electronic ICs, technical coverage and technical trainings. The Advanced Engineers are certified from a variety of suppliers such as NXP, ST, Microchip, and others. I worked as Field Application Engineer in this project.
Future Electronics Brazil has identified a potential customer called Industrial Rossi in the Center-East of Brazil. There is a huge market in Brazil for Garage Door Openers, and Industrias Rossi is the leader for the North region of Brazil. I was requested by my boss to visit customer engineers to identify a project, where I could support customer in the development and Future Electronics could sell the ICs when in production. After some meetings, I saw that the source supply for all projects were linear, which implies an expensive transformer and a huge space in the PCB board. Hence, I proposed to Rossi’s Engineers for changing to switching source suppliers, which are smaller and cheaper. However, they said they had no any experience with this technology, so I offered to develop a reference project to them. After a deep research about the best PWM controller to perform the application, I went for the part number ALTAIRO5T-800 from ST Microelectronics.
Project Title: IPD – Digital Load Cell Dates of Project: October 2015 to March 2016 Name of Organization: Toledo do Brasil Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil My Role: Electronic Engineer
The main goal of the project was to implement the solutions provided from INMETRO in a new project. So, I had to study cryptography algorithms, discuss with microcontrollers suppliers about their products, define the necessary hardware for the equipment and implement the embedded software for the solution. Also, I had to present Toledo’s solution for the INMETRO team to validate the concept. Due to the low resolution of the microcontroller ADC, after some meetings, I and my team decided to use an external 24-bits ADC in the project. This IC had been used in others company’s projects as well. After a deep study about the problem, I defined the hardware topology as a main microcontroller that would be in charge to perform all calculus and algorithms. Although I tried to implement the ECC cryptography through software in the microcontroller, I realized that the performance was improperly slow, so, I decided to use an external IC to calculate the ECC algorithm and store the secure keys. Also, I added up a TTL to RS232 IC, to convert the TTL signal (logic level) to a RS232 signal.
Toledo do Brasil is the leader company about solutions for hardware, software and services for weighting process in Latin America. The company started in 1901, founded in Ohio-USA. Furthermore, in 1932 they have started their operations In Brazil. After a few years in 1988, a Brazilian business man has bought the company, therefore the company started being 100% Brazilian. The company has more than 100 different types of solutions, and more than 30 engineers (electrical and mechanical) working in its behalf, and there is more than 1800 employers around Brazil.
The National Institute of Metrology Standardization and Industrial Quality (INMETRO) that is a Brazilian federal autarchy that is in charge to certify metrological devices. The INMETRO had identified a rising number of frauds in the market of Gas Dispensers. Therefore, some cheaters had created sophisticated devices to injury customers including external electronic devices to intercept and change the signal, corrupting these devices. These issues with Gas Dispensers alarmed the INMETRO for other markets including weight scales. Hence, the INMETRO started to study some possible implementation to avoid cheaters to possible corrupt weigh scales, and they developed a new regulation that was named as RTM. On this new regulation, they weigh scales companies had to develop a digital load cell able to measure the electrical signal, calculate the weight and prices (if they were applicable that moment) and deliver it through a secure protocol using a complex cryptography technique that is the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).
