Thank you for your interest in GarMel Technologies.  Please email inquiries to: engineering@garmeltech.com.

GarMel Technologies was formed in 2001 as a business name through which I do my contract engineering business. It also serves as a business though which I can promote my interest in embedded and PC-based programming.  In addition to the areas listed above, I have interests in areas of  avionics, weather sensing and monitoring, renewable energy (solar, wind) equipment monitoring and control, GPS, head-up display technology, and Home Automation.

In the embedded arena, I have experience in Z80, 8088, 68HC11, Microchip PICs, and Atmel AVR series.  I program in assembly and C.

In the PC world, I program in C, VB, and Pascal.  My OS experience includes DOS, Windows, RMX (hard real-time, pre-emptive, deterministic), and to a much lesser extent, OS/2.  I have Fedora Core 4 installed on my office PC and laptop. I am especially interested in Realtime Linux, but have had little time to explore it.

During the late winter and spring of 2002, I wrote a graphical pipeline batch tracking program in VB for a petroleum company at one of their sites in Minnesota.  Using SQL Server as conduit, pipeline flow and other pertinent data was provided to the application, the data was applied to the graphical tracking, and the display was updated.  Ultimately we split the program into two pieces, the calculation engine and the display client.  Using SQL server as the connection between the calculation and display programs allowed multiple (geographically distributed) display clients to run simultaneously and display the same (synchronized) information.

A couple of my personal projects include an anemometer based on a Peet Brothers wind sensor unit and a digital thermometer based on the Dallas Semiconductor DS1820 - both use a Microchip 16F84.  However, a direct lightning strike in July of 2004 thoroughly wiped them out. Also, since that time, I've switched to Atmel's AVR series. I've had little time to replace the functionality lost in the strike, so I'm presently without wx instrumentation.