Everything for Electronics

Beau Schwabe

Hello, My name is Beau Schwabe (BS). Over the past 36 years I have had a hobby in electronics and computers. As a kid I took apart everything I could get my hands on, just to see how it worked. My parents loved that!!

From 1990 to 2000 I worked in robotics Research and Development for a prosthetics facility in all aspects of the design process from concept to final product. This included board design, board etching, and board population. Most of our work was funded through SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grants where I hold two US patents.

Over the past 14 years I have worked in IC (Integrated Chip) design starting out with National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC) in their high speed communications division. While at NSC there were several chip designs that I worked on as well as contract work from other companies such as HP, Motorola, IBM, Erickson, Nokia, QualComm, Foveon, and SONY.

From 2005 to 2014, I worked for Parallax Inc where I played a significant roll in building version 2 of their successful 8 core multiprocessor (The Propeller II). Parallax Inc is a company with a focus of excellence toward Education when it comes to Electronics and Robotics.

In my spare time, I enjoy coding and designing electronic ‘gadgets’ that facilitate electronic education and learning, bringing a new outlook approach to solving a problem. I am a firm believer in thinking “outside of the book.” The key to success is to STOP learning!! This simply means put down the book for a moment, after all a book only represents someones opinion, and it may not necessarily be correct. The next step is to THINK about what you know. Use your own judgment and experience to filter out what works and does not work. The next step is to CREATE. Apply what you know and create something new. Finally, look for another book or source of information and apply these rules all over again.

Beau's Articles

Techniques to Improve Your Signal-to-Noise Ratio
March 2016
Learn some simple techniques to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in your projects.

Inductive Proximity Sensors Part 2
April 2009
As promised last month, the two different operation modes will be explained, as multople coils in a differential sensor approach are used.

Inductive Proximity Sensors
March 2009
A series resonant circuit built on a Propeller demo board is utilized in this build to detect the proximity of metallic objects.

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