Aaron Needles Email & Phone Number

Davis, CA, US

Firmware development and testing for leading-edge medical devices.

Developing both electronic instrumentation and firmware for seismic, force and gamma ray sensing.

Sunnyvale, CA, US

Developing firmware for Broadcom and Microchip parts for controlling a high volume consumer device.

• Needles Innovation provides a range of embedded software and hardware services and more detail can be found at www.needlesinnovation.comDesign Services
• Embedded software from concept to production
• System analysis and design
• PCB design & prototyping
• Retrofit/upgrade of existing designs
• Turnkey design of electronics and software

Burlingame, CA, US

Developed firmware for TI's MSP432P401R processor and a Broadcom Bluetooth Smart interface IC, in support of various consumer devices.

Developing motor control firmware for a BLAC motor using TI DSP and CCS compiler.

Washington, DC, US

• Advised customer on subsea hardware configuration and network interfacing.
• Modified an existing PC application per customer requirements.
• Diagnosed sensor communications and build a PC application to support testing.

• Designed, prototyped and tested a BLDC motor controller for a factory conveyance system.
• Provided PCB manufacturing support for existing PCB designs and redesigned a power supply to compensate for obsolete parts.

1017 RP Amsterdam, North Holland, NL

• Confidential

• Advised customer on system architecture for a subsea soil testing tool for the U.S. Navy.
• Designed pressure-tolerant PCB assemblies for the tool, including digital I/O, high-speed counter, serial data acquisition and stepper motor sequencing. Procured parts and hand-soldered several prototypes. Authored a.
• Designed a PC-based.NET application to remotely control the subsea device, providing setup, calibration, machine sequencing and data logging.
• Provided comprehensive user documentation and detailed serial protocol descriptions.
• Worked with customer and U.S. Navy personnel to refine, calibrate and test the completed system.

• Provided firmware for a brushless motor controller and optimized its function as a subsea winch. Authored several modes of position control and created a smoothing algorithm for incoming position commands which.
• Wrote control firmware and provided board bring-up support for a torque tool controller with CPLD.
• From ground up, designed and implemented firmware for a best-in-class network switch, and updated this to support the RSTP protocol with innovations to ensure subsea network reliability.
• Wrote multiple PC applications based on.NET technology, and these are still in use to provide multi-layer remote diagnostics and management of the network switch product line and other devices.
• In March 2013 I amicably left FMC Schilling Robotics to pursue my own consulting business.

• Specified requirements and designed control firmware and hardware for multiple aspects of remotely operated vehicle (ROV) control system including hydraulic power unit, cable handling system and hydraulic thruster.
• Designed, developed and prototyped a hydraulic thruster speed controller (PCB and firmware) for the hydraulic ROV product line. Devised a scheme to determine high-quality velocity feedback from low-cost Hall-effect.
• Designed optical-isolator circuits for analog signal amplification and serial interface with DC/DC power supply and 1000VAC isolation.
• Designed and prototyped water detection sensor and FPGA code in VHDL for sensing water intrusion into electronic packages.

• Provided oversight for a 3D solid-modeling and animation system for robot task planning and visualization. While onsite with our customer, I devised a solution for ABB Atom in a Swedish nuclear plant maintenance task.
• For the CMRS robot for the U.S. Army, I led a team of five software engineers in developing a specialized robot controller for automating the loading and unloading of missile pods.
• Led the software effort to develop a compact hydraulic actuator controller for the Conan manipulator line and implemented the topside user interface and control system for the same.

• Developed user interface and control software for the Gemini dual-arm system for nuclear waste handling. I pioneered the Windows-based GUI and control system which utilized an industrial PC.
• Developed a user interface and control system for NGOS. This required integration of RTI’s Constellation toolset for control of a dual-arm manipulator system with Cartesian-based hand control via 6-axis joystick input..

• I developed, enhanced and maintained the control and user interface software for the company’s full line of robotic manipulators from 1986 through 2012. I also developed software for multiple custom products during.
• For the US Navy NR-1 submarines, I led a team of software engineers through concept, design, and implementation of the control software for a force-reflecting robot arm, the active master arm, and the user-interface.
• Designed a flash file system and O/S to manage loading and distributing of binary files to a distributed controller set.

• Advised client on machine controls for design of a bottle corking machine for Napa Valley wineries.
• Designed and produced a control board for energizing and clearing a safety interlock.

Bs, Electrical Engineering

Completed Coursework Only, Towards A M.S., Computer Science

Education record