Robert Blumberg robertb@aliyance.com - Expert in Embedded and Real Time Systems Development - 35 years of experience in software and system design, development and management§ Custom, VxWorks and WinCE embedded systems design and implementation - Real-time software design and development - Driver design and development - 8- 16- and 32-bit C and C++ experience - Windows and Unix application programming - Past development in many other languages, from Fortran to numerous assemblers Available for on-site or off-site project code development as well as project planning and management.Please note extensive history of successful products developed on time and under budget.

CONTRACT CONSULTING PROJECTS

I have executed projects for PictureIQ, Intermec, Coinstar, Wincom, Allen-Bradley, Netmanage, Computer Associates, Legent, Midisoft, Raytheon and Wall Data.

For PictureIQ I designed and developed the video display, I2C, memory stick, LED and smart media drivers, enhanced the board support package (BSP), as well as cleaning up other vendor supplied drivers for retail photo appliances in C++ under VxWorks for a PowerPC for PictureIQ. As part of the driver development I developed a paradigm and class structure to generalize driver design, incorporating the maximum amount of commonality in each level of the class structure. This enabled much reuse of code amongst the various drivers, reducing code size and increasing quality. The development was for a series of products that display photos from digital cameras on the purchasers' televisions. These products were developed under contract from Iomega, HP and Logitec to be manufactured by them and distributed under their names.

I developed, for Coinstar, the coin-path control software that cleans, moves and sorts the coins. This required design and development of a high-speed real-time scheduler, the device drivers, and a real-time mechanical control system for an x86 class microcontroller. I had full responsibility and was the sole developer in these areas. The development was in C++. Besides software design and development, I was responsible for the microprocessor, ICE, and tools choices. Much of the work that I did for them on coin sorting is now part of their patent portfolio.

For Intermec, I developed the keyboard software for their 5020 barcode scanner product. I architected and programmed both the WinCE driver and the PIC micro-controller. For the keyboard PIC micro-controller, I developed a simple scheduler using deadline monotonic analysis. The PIC scanned the keys and communicated with the host over a serial port. This development was done in the C language. The keypad driver I designed and developed, in C++, is significantly cleaner and more flexible than the example distributed by Microsoft. It supports accented characters (using dead-keys), multiple keypad layouts and multiple languages. Flexibility is achieved by using run-time mapping tables to configure the driver. I also tuned the WinCE LCD display driver and mentored the staff member responsible for the PIC micro-controller used for power management. In addition, I did clean-up work in the HAL level code and some general system debugging in preparation for product release.

I designed and developed the fast warm-up power supply control of klystron radar tubes for Raytheon. This power supply closely monitors the current draw while raising the voltages well above normal operating limits. The time-varying voltages applied are dependent upon the instantaneous and past current and voltage during the warm-up.

For Allen-Bradley, I developed a personal computer software package to augment the central Unix system used to monitor and control automated manufacturing lines. This product has been marketed by Allen-Bradley and used by GM and other manufacturers. It controls and graphically displays a pictorial representation of the current state of a factory manufacturing process. As part of this development, I created RS232 communication protocols that operate in an electrically noisy factory-floor environment for communication between Unix workstations and personal computers. I also developed a higher level protocol to minimize the communication between host and PCs.

Another PC product that I developed monitors building heating and cooling device usage. The software includes real time monitoring and fault analysis of the sensors as well as accounting and billing functions.

Other projects have included Windows sockets, client-server, e-mail, text-to-speech and speech recognition applications. Tasks ranged from class design and implementation in C++ to developing specification documents and project planning.

PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT

Voice Processing Corporation, Vice President of Product Development

• As a hands-on manager, I assembled and led the software and hardware-engineering teams that designed, built and supported a series of speech-recognition products. These included the design and production of multiprocessor single-board computers and the proprietary real-time control and speech recognition software to run on them. In addition I designed the API to run on the PCs hosting the speech recognition boards. I had responsibility not only for the hardware and software teams, but also for hardware and software production. At the end of my tenure, I moved over to responsibility for all major sales opportunities, targeting soundboard, Long Distance and Bell Operating companies. I was instrumental in licensing our speech recognition software to Creative labs for their Sound Blaster product line.
  

  
  Bitstream Inc., Director of Engineering

• I led a small software team that developed CAD/CAM software for designing type fonts. This Unix based software includes an interactive-graphics system for type designers, a specialized typesetting language, and font-proofing program to drive a very high-resolution laser printer.

Strategic Planning Institute, Manager of Software Development

• I led the software development staff of this consulting company specializing in corporate strategic positioning. My major accomplishment was the development of conversion language and its compiler for the flexible migration of sensitive corporate data to new economic model data structures.
  
  
  Quadex Corporation, Manager of Advanced Software Development
  

• At Quadex, a manufacturer of a computerized front-end system for high-quality typography, I was instrumental in the development of what became the standard computerized advertising typography system. Personally, I redesigned the time-sharing scheduler, speeding up the system 15% overall. Also I designed and implemented the virtual memory system and the hard disk driver.
  
  

  Academic employment summary, Staff Scientist, Sr. Software Engineer
  

• I developed a variety of systems and scientific software for the University of Rhode Island's Narragansett Marine Laboratory, Columbia University's Nevis Particle Physics Research Laboratory, Columbia University's Lamont Geophysical Laboratory and MIT's Lincoln Laboratories

EDUCATION

Columbia University, Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, 1965.
Columbia University, Master of Science in Applied Mathematics, 1967.

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

ACM, IEEE, and the IEEE Computer Society.

PATENTS

Patent number 5,988,348, "Coin discrimination apparatus and method" - assigned to Coinstar, Inc.