#635 – Low Power Connected Devices with Andrea Longobardi

The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Welcome Andrea Longobardi of AL2tech!

• Andrea is a consultant in the HW / FW space, based out of Italy.
• Chris met Andrea when he was transitioning to consulting and he joined the consulting forum.
• Andrea comes from a family of engineerhing, His father is an EE who made PCBs at home but kept it from the kids
• He worked at ST Micro designing drivers for server disk drives
• If you lose power, the arm will crash into the platen. So when power fails, you use the energy in the motor to backpower the arm.
• Didn’t like being pigeonholed and he wanted to get into apps engineering
• Moved to Maxim, which he knew about because of their sample program
• Working in automotive space: harsh environment and dealing with things like:
  • Load dump
  • Cold crank
  • Low power during shutdown
• Dealing with customers on last minute basis
• Went abroad to the UK and worked for ARM/PA Consulting
• Chris asked about the engineering culture in Italy/UK
• Lot of focus on theory
• “With the internet you can become an expert very quickly”
• AL2Tech is Andrea, his brother Allessandro and a lab assistant
• Had been back at Maxim focused on low power, connected devices
• What’s it like working with a sibling?
• Finding first client as a consultant:
  • Networking with people on linkedin
  • Looking at job openings and offering part time work
  • Did it while building up the company
  • Showing side projects (air quality sensor + BLE) since he couldn’t talk about his work at chip companies
• It worked when a small company took a chance on him
• FAEs were big companies, didn’t get access to the smaller company engs
• Building test boards to learn new things (for the Joulescope), like a custom front panel
• Gas monitoring is an area of focus for AL2tech
• The device is battery powered, sitting on the meter.
• Certification is critical: the certifying body is looking at schematic / layout and making sure nothing heats past the point of igniting gas.
• Zone 0, 1, 2
• Conformal coating
• Why not put everything in Resin? Cost
• Volume correctors for gas monitoring
• For billing, they lean on PV=nRT
• Internal product at AL2Tech is the Elektra
• There is a CO sensor that caches data and sends over NFC and BLE
• It detaches from a shirt with battery, but a reed switch disables power when not connected (so it can be washed)
• Using the shirt to attract people and talk about capabilities
• Embedded World helped expand outside of Italy
• Other proejcts
  • Rain Vision
  • Tauanito Sensors
• Find Andrea on LinkedIn
• Check out al2tech.com to learn more about the company