William Welch

William D. Welch

bwelchdream@gmail.com

SUMMARY:

Over forty years of engineering experience in many diverse areas, from writing device drivers for Linux and to numerous embedded systems. Ability to work very close to the hardware, and communicate effectively with digital, analog, and RF engineers. Very detail oriented and known for constructive comments during design and document reviews, for clear explanations of technical concepts, and for an intuitive understanding of software and systems.

TECHNICAL EXPERTISE:

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

W. D. Welch Consulting, Albertville, AL 2012 - present

Owner.

Freelance consultant. Bluetooth low energy beacons, RTOS embedded system with ThreadX, FileX, and NetX. Device drivers for SPI, fpga, sensors, flash chips. Linux device drivers. Micropython on esp32 with Sim7600 lte module. ESP32 with arm m0 and Lora radio module.

2006 - 2011

CANbus project development, including Python PyQt GUI application, Picmicro RS232 to CANbus bridge, and Picmicro CANbus monitor. Embedded software development for Marvell SheevaPlug, running Debian and Ubuntu. Embedded software development for Xilinx Virtex-5 PowerPC CPU, using LWIP, System ACE, DDR2, TEMAC gigabit ethernet with multicast filtering. Linux was also evaluated. Embedded software development for NXP LPC2378 system, including TCP/IP and USB. Software development for the Asterisk PBX. Embedded software development for Microchip 18F4620 data logger using SD card – FAT filesystem, RS232, SPI bus interface. Embedded software for Microchip 18F67J60 Internet appliance data logger. Software development for web-based messaging system, using ASP.NET and SQL database.

Avocent Corporation, Huntsville, AL 2002 - 2006

Senior Staff Engineer

Member software development team for a line of embedded internet appliances - Digital Keyboard-Video-Mouse over TCP/IP. These products are generating significant revenue for the company. Responsibilities included video mode recognition firmware, performance enhancements, device drivers for: video subsystem, DMA controller, hardware timer, interrupt handlers, and SSL/TLS hardware acceleration.

Time Domain Corporation, Huntsville, AL 1995 - 2002

Senior Engineer

Proposed initial concept and provided high-level system spec for the company’s first evaluation kit for UWB radio technology. Designed and developed embedded packet radio software. When the vendor-supplied RTOS was not available, very quickly developed an RTOS and network stack with UDP and DHCP. This in-house developed RTOS provided more than a year of useful service. Provided critical design input to overall radio architecture and chip design. Worked on system-level test vectors for UWB chipset. Developed discrete simulators for UWB signals and systems. Entire systems were simulated, including transmitter, multipath channel, receiver, acquisition, tracking, modulation, demodulation. Worked on various patent ideas, which were awarded, including a unique half-duplex ranging scheme. Limited experience with FEC- convolutional codes, Reed-Solomon, Hamming.

MaxVision Corporation, Huntsville, AL 1993 - 1995

Principal Engineer

One of six co-founders of the company. Was responsible for software design and development for a unique dual-screen, high-resolution SVGA card. Modified the BIOS to support the configuring of the FPGA, and support various non-standard screen resolutions. Developed one of the earliest known dual-screen device drivers for Microsoft Windows NT.

Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, AL 1991 - 1993

Senior Systems Consultant

Member of software development team for an electronic schematic capture package, running on Windows. Helped with company-wide migration to Windows NT from various legacy systems. Ported large third-party packages to the Clipper (UNIX), to Windows NT, and to Sun Solaris.

W. D. Welch Consulting, Huntsville, AL 1989 - 1991

Owner.

Ported numerous analysis software packages from DOS to Windows. Added TCP/IP support to a Windows schematic capture application.

ZAIAZ Corp., Huntsville, AL 1983 - 1988

Vice-President of Engineering

Responsible for UNIX software porting, device drivers, networking. Led hardware and software design and development for the PC market. As part of a two-man team, built a prototype DEC Qbus CPU card, with onboard RISC NS16K CPU, running UNIX using DEC I/O. Developed state-machine for the bus interface. This prototype resulted in a long-term relationship with a vendor who had a lot of DEC compatible I/O cards and needed to migrate to UNIX. Developed software for an existing RISC NS16K PC/AT “accelerator” card, enabling it to run UNIX with DOS I/O. Shipped a demo copy to the vendor, to prove that it really worked. The vendor was impressed, but unable to produce sufficient quantities of the card. Their customers came to us, and we produced a series of boards, ultimately based on the Clipper CPU. Our high-speed graphics connector enabled some amazing graphics capability and led to sales overseas of our product. Some consulting for Intergraph. Helped one division of Intergraph migrate to UNIX- Helped with very first port of UNIX, ever, to Intergraph hardware. Provided UNIX kernel driver training, etc. Participated in development efforts on NS32K and Clipper platforms. Some limited telephony consulting. Telephone tester, 68K RTOS for local measured metering system.

General Digital Industries, Huntsville, AL 1980 – 1982

Engineer

Work on various embedded systems, based on DEC LSI-11 hardware, and a VT52 emulator for a custom video terminal. Developed early prototype of embedded system for Federal Express. Worked with RT-11, RSX11M, and UNIX operating systems.

System Development Corp., Huntsville, AL 1978 – 1980

Engineer

Worked on systems analysis and software design on VAX/VMS. Developed networking device drivers for the beta-test of the some the very first VAX systems ever produced.