Embedded - 168: Put Your Gear on the Ping Pong Table

Episode Date: September 14, 2016

Briana Morey from MC10 (@mc10inc) spoke with us about stretchable electronics, Tesla coils and lasers. She works at MC10, creators of the L'Oreal My UV Patch as well as the BioStampRC.  MC10 is hiring! They are in Lexington, MA, US. The embedded software position is filled already but the EE position is still open. Briana mentioned an excellent science fiction book she'd read recently: Too Like Lightning by Ada Palmer.

Welcome to Embedded. I'm Alessia White, here with Christopher White. Our guest this week is Brianna Mori, an electrical engineer at a company making stretchable, wearable sensors. Before we get to talk to Brianna, we do have the contest running where we are collecting numbers in order for you to win books. Collecting numbers? I know.

Well, Christopher is no longer collecting them. He gave his away at our last show. I don't understand how that person... And got a direct hit from Roy. But yes, there are two books to give out and if none of this makes sense, that's okay. But if it does make sense, send them in soon. Otherwise, somebody may take our numbers and you have to send them in by October 1st.

Hi, Brianna. Thanks for talking to us today. Hi, thanks for having me. Could you tell us about yourself? So I'm an electrical engineer at MC10. I went to WPI to study electrical engineering for both undergrad and grad school. Prior to working in MC10, I designed high power electronics for lasers and worked on robotics for semiconductor scribing robots and wafer handlers. So I've been at MC10 for about four and a half amazing years. I've worn a number of different hats while I've been there, which has been great. I've had a lot

of cross-functional exposure, so I've really been lucky to get to work with many, many insanely intelligent people at MC10. And I've been really lucky to have the opportunity to learn from all of them. Outside of work, I read obsessively and I always have a project going on the side, whether it's building Tesla coils or right now I'm actually renovating a Victorian house that was built in 1900. So that's been a really exciting challenge trying to, uh, retain the character of the house, especially of the woodwork and that kind of thing. So I'm always looking for kind of a challenge technical or not. Um, and I've been really lucky to find a lot of that at MC10. And you're restoring the house purely as a place to put the Tesla coil, right? You know, that has come up in conversation.

I would love to add some more Tesla coils to my collection. But the house has really been the biggest challenge I think I've ever undertaken personally outside of work. I like that it's going to be thematically correct for the Tesla coil. Right, that's what I meant. Absolutely. thematically correct for the tesla coil right that's what i meant actually outside of the tesla coil is one of my prized possessions is a is a 1935 uh outwater kent uh radio it's got like variable capacitors that let you tune the channels um and it's it's an actual you know old piece so it fits perfectly into the house all right now i have so many more questions than I did, but I feel like we should talk about this whole stretchable,

wearable electronics, and then we can get back to lasers and Tesla coils and so many things. But even before we do that, we do this thing called lightning round where we ask you short questions and we want you to answer with short answers. And then if we're behaving, we don't ask why or. We say we want you to answer with short answers and then if we're behaving we don't ask why or we say we want you to answer with short answers yes well don't mean it christopher

why don't you start okay favorite particle subatomic or otherwise electrons of course yeah i guess favorite processor oh i don't know if I have a favorite processor. Ah, electrical engineers, they don't really care. Yeah, I just feel like it really depends on what you're doing. So I'm not sure if I have one in particular. If I'm doing something simple, right? You know, I kind of cut my teeth on picks. But that's nobody's favorite. No, that's true.

I don't know about that. Yes. See, I don't know about that. Yes. See, I don't know if I actually have a favorite one. Sorry. Least favorite planet or moon? Oh, least favorite planet. Probably. Oh, man, I don't know. I like like them all these are hard questions um

you're the first person who hasn't had a strong opinion on the least favorite planet i know i guess i'll have to go with neptune because i feel like for gas giants jupiter's probably cooler um or i'd rather you know i've read more about about Uranus, um, but I think Neptune's just kind of far out there. It's not Pluto, which, you know, there's been great debate about whether it's a planet or not, I guess, technically, no, but, um, so yeah, Neptune, least favorite planet. I'm glad we came to a resolution on that one. It's an important question.

Favorite fictional robot. I'm not sure if it technically qualifies, but would have to say fido from neil stevenson snow crash oh oh good choice yeah really have to ask this no what kind of flux do you prefer uh like magnetic or like see that's that there we go i think the question was intended to be to be solder flux, yeah. Yeah, okay. Do you have a preferred solder flux? I like rosin flux the best. I actually really love the kind of solder that comes with the flux on the inside already.

It's cheating, but yeah. Yeah, it's completely cheating. And I was definitely disappointed when we went to like lead-free flux because the stuff with the real lead in it definitely flows better, but can't use it anymore. What is most important to your job, a pen, soldering iron, or a keyboard? Keyboard, definitely. What science fiction technology or concept do you think will become real in our lifetime? And I have to say that isn't already real because... I don't know if I could pick something in particular, but I think the way that when someone gets hurt in a sci-fi show, they have the wand that instantly cures them,

or I think that would be the coolest one. And I think that healthcare is one of the places that we're making the greatest strides right now. So I can't predict specifically what will get better, but I think disease prevention and treatment and also the way that we deal with trauma are the places that I would look for the biggest impact. What's the best book you've read in the last three months? It's called To Like the Lightning. And it's a futuristic political thriller sort of thing where basically the thing that's changed the world the most is having these cars that are a little bit like Uber that can circumnavigate

the globe in four hours. And so it starts to sort of break down geographical nations into nations that are sort of more ideologically similar. And so it's sort of about how that changes the world and how people in the world interact with each other and with technology. That sounds cool. It was really awesome. Final question. This is a difficult question, so be prepared. Should we bring back the woolly mammoth?

Ooh, I think yes. I think that there's a lot we could learn from bringing back the woolly mammoth. And especially from a biological standpoint, I think the more knowledge we have, the better off we are. And I think that the things that we've learned from that would probably outweigh the risks for me.

But I also think I probably shouldn't be the only person allowed to weigh in on that decision. I wonder how long it would be between bringing back the Wooly Mammoth and McDonald's coming out with the McMammoth burger. I give them three months. Yeah, that wouldn't be long. Okay, so I got connected to you because Chris Speck, one of our listeners and one of our co-contributors on the blog, pointed out the L'Oreal UV patch. And this is something you stick on, they keep showing it on hands, and it tells you when you've had too much sun. And your company, MC10, makes that or designed designed that right? That's correct so we um it was in a

partnership with L'Oreal or La Roche-Posay um and so we we developed sort of the technology behind it um but essentially the MyUV patch uh looks like a temporary tattoo and it is often shown worn on the hand although you can uh like most of our technology you can place it anywhere on your body um but what's really cool about it is how thin it is it's less than 50 microns thick but the fact that you know you can actually make electronics that are that thin is really one of the the revolutionary things about mc10 technology. So you can, that is very, very thin. I mean, I kept hearing it say, I kept seeing sites that said it was the width of a human hair,

but that's not always the best measure to me. 50 microns is better. You like abstract numbers rather than comparing to physical objects? Yep. As a scientist, we definitely prefer numbers to sort of vague descriptions. So 50 microns, there you go. So it has a UV-sensitive dye, which I have seen in other things. And yet it also has an NFC thing. How does this actually talk to my phone? AndC enabled you can wave your phone over the patch and that will open the app that will allow you to take a picture of the patch and so the photosensitive

dyes within the patch when they're exposed to UV rays there are different squares of color on the patch that will change to indicate different levels of sun exposure and then there are a few squares on there too that will remain the same to sort of give the app a baseline comparison so that basically everyone has a slightly different skin tone, right? So we're using the squares that don't change as a baseline for when you take that picture. So use the app then to take a photograph of the patch and then upload it to the app. And so it'll analyze the various shades of blue and determine how much UV exposure you've actually gotten. And so it'll offer suggestions on when to reapply sunscreen.

Okay, so do I apply sunscreen to it? Is that how it knows? Yep, that's correct. So you can apply sunscreen to the patch. It's so seamless with your skin honestly like a lot of things uh you know that are skin-based or whatever they stick up they don't feel like your skin but this you apply sunscreen to your skin and to the patch and that way it gives you a more accurate measure of has my sunscreen warm off? Oh, I went swimming. So maybe it washed away. And then

when you're actually looking at the patch and you're using the app to sort of identify the amount of UV exposure you've gotten, it's more accurate because it has the same amount of sunscreen that your skin does. And when it's wearing off your skin, it's also wearing off the patch. See, that's really cool. All the UV sensors I've been wanting and been thinking about building myself, none of them took into account that I always wear sunscreen. And so I knew that even if I made a little hat clip thing, I was going to have to balance how much sunscreen I had and when it was

and do all that calculation myself. But putting the sunscreen on the sensor is better. Absolutely. And it really does make a difference. You can be out in the sun all day, but if you have a much higher SPF than someone who doesn't, you may be in more or less trouble depending on what you're wearing. As someone who is red-haired and fair-skinned,

yeah, there's always sunscreen yes um okay so it doesn't sound like i actually need the nfc in the camera i can just look at the blue and and decide for myself right so the the app itself is much more sensitive than you just sort of looking at it um and it can give you a much more objective sort of mathematically calculated answer to how much sunscreen do I need or do I need to apply more sunscreen. So like you were saying before with 50 microns versus, oh, it's about the thickness of a human hair. Sort of knowing exactly where you are and, you know, taking the guesswork out of it, I think is really beneficial. You said it was like a fake tattoo. One of the things that is nice about fake tattoos versus stickers is that the tattoos are sort of stretchy, not super stretchy, but a little stretchy.

And it feels more like skin than a paper that doesn't have any give. Are these really, do they have give? So they are absolutely stretchable. One of the most incredible things I think about MC10's technology is that our patches really do stretch with your skin. And so it makes it much more conformal. It makes it less noticeable in some of the tests that we've been running. You know, when you put these things on people and then, you know, if you put four of them on a person just to test something and you ask for them back and they only give you three,

people don't notice that they're wearing these things. They really do stretch with your skin. So how is that possible with electronics? I mean, I'm just, I'm barely used to flex circuits, which are super annoying to use, but at least they, you know, turn and shift. They're not solderable, but they turn and shift. How can you also make them springy? So it works a little bit like an accordion. So if you think about an accordion uh you can still pull it apart but none of the parts of it actually stretch okay um so obviously metal doesn't really stretch um but we have a proprietary geometry where uh there are these curves that have been added to the system so when you pull apart the entire system uh it allows it to stretch i'm still okay

yeah no it makes sense it does it doesn't it makes sense it's still okay. Yeah. No, it makes sense. It does. It makes sense. It's still cool. Yeah. Right. I mean, if you think about a spring, right, it's still made out of metal. Metal doesn't stretch, but a spring does. And so it's sort of a similar concept. But what's great about it is we've made it super thin and super small. So not only is it something that can stretch, but it's something that couples very tightly to your skin. And something that, you know, if you brush your hand over it, you're not going to notice that it's there, but then it still stretches. So if you put it in a place, you know, on your wrist, for instance, where you want to be able to bend

your wrist, you'll still be able to do that without noticing it the way that you would some other less stretchable or even less flexible electronics. But I mean, with flex circuits, both the substrate and the metal are flexible-ish and you can make them go back and forth, But neither one of them is springy. And I can get, okay, you put the metal down and you put it down in a special way and it's accordion-like and it folds, but I'm still having trouble with the substrate. What do you put it down on that is also stretchy? I mean, are you really using fake tattoo material? So that's, that's actually where, um, the geometry comes in as well. So you, you can lay it down on a, on a stretchable substrate. Um, but essentially, right. You can't have, so it depends also on what you mean by substrate,

right? Like if you're talking about your adhesive, uh, that's one thing, but if you're talking about your actual, um, sort of what you put the metal down on, like when you're making a flex PCB, right, you have a substrate and that doesn't stretch either. So the geometry actually works in both ways. So you have your substrate and your metal and the geometry of both is important. Yeah. Yeah, it would have to be. Okay. So how do you solder anything to this? Carefully. You,

you absolutely can solder, but you have to use low temperatures. You have to be really careful with it. And usually do it off your hand. Probably. In general. I can totally see me trying to solder something on my arm. Yes, I would advise against that as a general principle.

But yeah, no, I think that if you looked at our labs, you'd find them pretty similar to other people's, you know, to other companies where, you know, our equipment's the same. But it's really the design that makes the difference well i i guess i am getting sort of accustomed to the flex circuits and how difficult they are to solder because they're so fragile and and how low temperature solder is a thing which is still boggling but all right that's weird um to sum up, some of this came out of research, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And so one of the advantages that I think we have is John Rogers' labs, they continuously put out new technology and his researchers are really at the cutting edge of flexible and stretchable technology. And so I feel like in corporations, right, you kind of have to pick a direction and stick with it. And, you know, you can do a lot of really amazing research. But these researchers at the university are continuously trying new things and coming out with things that I've never seen before and that I

don't think anyone has. And so some of our really incredible technologies have really come from his lab. So John Rogers' lab has just been, our connection with his lab has been an incredible thing. What else have you gotten from there? Well, so a lot of the physical form factors, some of the sensing modalities are things that were tried there first. And then for us to sort of take that and run with it has been really helpful in kind of keeping MC10 on the cutting edge. So is MC10 usually a consulting company? Are you a design company? Are you an ideas company that outsources manufacturing? If I wanted to hire MC10, what would I be hiring them for? So we're actually making products. So it's not that we're a consulting firm. It's not that we do design for

other people in general. We've actually just released a new product called BioStamp RC. Right. BioStamp RC is a research solution for collecting physiological data. And so it's targeted at the academic, clinical, nonprofit, commercial researchers who are basically, if you're looking to gain more understanding about the biometrics of the human body, this is probably the thing for you. So we definitely are looking to put out products, have things on the market. And so it's not so much that you would hire MC10, it's that you would buy MC10 products. You remember when I had a project about a year ago, and I'm talking to Chris, sorry, Brianna, I know we just met. And I had to do accelerometer and gyroscope placed on a body and then send data back over BLE and make them pretty graphs.

Right. And so that they could teach people how to play basketball. Right. Well, apparently now they just buy MC10's product. That's exactly it. And there are a lot of researchers who are doing sports related things where, you know, they want to understand how your golf swing has changed or, you know,

maybe you've hurt yourself and you're trying to get back on the ski slope and they want to see, you know, how your, how your skiing has changed and how your abilities have changed. So we definitely have researchers all over the country who are looking at a variety of different things where the possibilities are sort of limitless, where, you know, you can look at the way people move but the way people move really is the way people live and so um we're sort of trying to help researchers gain more understanding into what that looks like not just in the lab but out in the world you know when you go home or when you are on the ski slope you're not sort of constrained to a lab when you so you have the accelerometer and gyroscopes um the six axis inertial device that seems ubiquitous now um but you also have the electronic electric biopotential so you're reading um uh yeah that's correct so you're getting muscle activation

basically exactly so we can look at muscle activation signals. So essentially when you flex a muscle versus when you're not flexing and sort of how much you're flexing that muscle, how much you're using it, we can see that signal. And it also works for measuring things like heart rate because essentially that's also a biopotential. Have you ever tried to use it um and not moved the muscle like i've heard and this is just totally a crazy idea last week i would have said it was a wackadoodle idea but this week it's a crazy idea where you do get some bio uh biopotential when you think about moving muscles? Sorry, this is totally off topic. I'm just curious. No, uh, that's not something that I have personally tested. Okay. So I'm going to need a whole kit. Yeah. I mean, if that's something that you wanted to try, right.

So one of the, honestly, one of the really cool things about BioStamp RC is that you get the raw data as the researcher. So if that's something that you wanted to look at and you wanted to say, okay, you're going to think about moving this muscle and not moving it, that's something that you could look for. It's not something that we've looked at, but you are getting the raw signal, which is something I think really, that really differentiates MC10 because there are a lot of devices out there that have I think really that really differentiates MC10, because there are a lot of devices out there that have an accelerometer that have a gyro. But what they give you is something like step count activity level, you know, heart rate,

whatever it is. But they don't give you the raw data. They don't say, you know, okay, whatever it is that you're interested in looking at, here's the raw signal, you can see the raw accelerometer, the raw gyro, and the raw biopotentials. And then you can decide what your application is and look at it with greater acuity than you would with one of these other devices. And this is a BLE device. I mean, Bluetooth Low Energy. That's correct. So it's actually an end-to-end system. So you have these super flexible, stretchable patches that you can put anywhere on the body, whether you're trying to target a muscle location or you can put it on the tops of your feet, you can put it on the backs of your hand, you comes with the system um and then the adhesive stickers are actually separate so uh you can keep reusing the sensor and just replace the adhesive sticker it seems like beyond sports there's a whole bunch of applications in medicine too where you i'm just well even as an input coming to mind parkinson's monitoring parkinson's

patients for tremors or things like that seems It seems like, you know, a ton of things you could do with that. I want to stick one to my forehead and make people believe that I can do things with my mind, but it's just me tilting my head back and forth. Okay. Sorry. Definitely try that. But Christopher, you're absolutely right. I think that sort of what you're talking about and the applications are sort of limitless. So if you're a researcher and you want to understand better how a Parkinson's patient moves or someone who moves differently or who moves differently from the way that they

used to move for whatever reason, whether that's a disease or an injury, that's sort of the style of research that you could conduct because you can actually look at those muscle signals, those Excel signals, those gyro signals and say, you know, okay, three months ago, you look different. Or, you know, when I took this measurement in the lab, you look one way, but then when you go home, you look another way, which is absolutely something that we've seen. Oh, yeah. I feel like you need a stretch sensor stretch sensor you know one of the ones that i was thinking about um we have a family member who was injured recently and and it would be nice to know that he was not breaking the rules about how much he could lift and i'm one of these that would like send an that said, okay, you got to three quarters of your limit and you can't lift any more than that. Yeah, that's a stretch and strain kind of sensor.

Yeah, that would probably be more like a strain gauge. But I mean, it's possible. And so this isn't something that we've tested, but it's possible that you could ascertain that from the muscle signals. Right, yeah. And so one of the problems that we've had at MC10 is that, you know, there are so many incredible things that you could potentially do with this. And so sort of picking one to sort of go with has been hard. But I think what's really cool about having this available to researchers is that's something that people could use, people could use our sensors to find that out.

Yeah. It is a huge, broad thing. And you're making a platform more than you're making a final product. I mean, it's a little bit of both, right? It's definitely a platform. But the versatility, I think, is what makes it most appealing to researchers. Because a lot of times, right, if you want to really delve into something a tool that's been developed specifically for this use case or this data stream um and so the the bio stamp rc um it's specific in the signals that it gets you but it's really versatile in where you can put it in what you can look at and so they're really the the possibilities are sort of endless well this has a battery so it's not nfc not like the patches uh 15 milliamp hour i think is what it said and it is encased which makes sense

because you couldn't reuse it if it was um the tattoo like material but it's still pretty small um like maybe sticking two band-aids on one on top of the other is that about right yeah that's about right so um and the battery it is a 15 milliamp hour battery um and so um a lot of that so what's nice about it having a battery and being bluetooth enabled is that it doesn't leave you tethered to sort of a base station or anything like that. So in addition to the sensors, we have an app that runs on a tablet. And so the app, you can kind of use it like a remote control where you can look at the signals, you can stream them live and say, OK, you know, this looks like what I expect it to. I'm in the right location. I can see the signal I'm looking for. And then you can just hit start recording. And so once the patch starts recording, you don't need to be anywhere near the

tablet. So if you're a researcher, you have your patients in the clinic, you put the patches on them, and then you can set them to whatever mode you want to record in, start recording and send your test subject home. And so in that way, you can get data that's not tethered to any specific device. People can go about their daily lives. They barely notice they're wearing them. And you can get data that's more inherent to the way they really move. And then when they come back to your clinic or your lab, you can turn the patches off, remove them, and then download that data. And so we also have a web portal where you can set up your study ahead of time and say,

okay, these are the things I want to look at on these patients. You know, these are the activities I want them to complete. These are the questions that I want them to answer. So you set up your study ahead of time. And then when you get your patches back, all of your data is available via that web portal. You can download your data. You can look at it on the MC10 dashboard and actually make comparisons to, you know, what different sections of the data look like. That makes sense. So usually when we do these things, when we have wearables and even adhesives or things stuck to people as they're doing sports, which sadly I do know something about. And by the way, I am terrible at basketball.

The engineers are usually the first guinea pigs. How many sensors are you wearing right now? Actually, three. We definitely are our own guinea pigs. I've spent a lot of time wearing sensors and other people in the office have worn even more probably. But it's been, it's actually been a pretty great experience because you want to make sure that whatever you're going to ask other people to wear that you've spent a lot of time wearing yourself. And it's helped us work out some of the kinks. And it's also helped us really sort of understand the experience and make it better. And it's also been a really awesome team building thing sort of inside the company because it's something that we're all really invested in, you know, collecting data, making sure that the wear experience is great. And so having everyone sort of on the same page and working together and trying to collect that data has been a great experience. It's actually really fun.

So what has been the most difficult part of developing the system? That's a really good question. So we've had a number of challenges, but I think the initial challenge, right, the IP that MC10 was founded on is continuing to develop thinner, more flexible, wearable computers. So sort of getting away from that rigid mindset of electronics have to be rigid and trying to sort of push the boundaries of how thin, how small, how stretchable can we make things. There's been a lot of testing behind that, reliability both on and off the body, so bench testing and on-person testing. So that's definitely been a challenge. And then once we sort of established flexibility,

we need to make sure that it stays coupled to a person's body in order to capture movement. So we've done a ton of development work on the adhesive sticker. Yeah, adhesives are a pain. I mean, they're just really annoying. They are definitely challenging. But we've really had to balance finding an appropriate adhesive strength that leads to durability, accurate data capture,

especially if you're capturing those biopotentials, right? You need to make sure that your electrodes are really tightly coupled to the skin. But then kind of on the flip side, you also, and maybe even more importantly, need to make sure that your adhesive doesn't irritate or harm the skin. So looking at making sure that your materials are biocompatible and sort of studying the interaction between your adhesives and human skin has been critical in our development process. So that's been a big challenge. And then one of the other things that we've really spent a lot of time on is, right, we're collecting all of this data and it needs to be stored and managed. So sort of managing and organizing vast amounts of data in the MC10 cloud has been sort of an ongoing challenge. And it's definitely an area where we are continuously improving

in efficiency and in usability. So we've got this amazing software team, which has been really integral in creating this sort of end to end system. Because if you have all this data, but you can't look at it, or you can't manage it, or you can't manage it or you can't you know sort of do the analysis you need to do it's not very useful so um making sure that the physiological data um that the researchers are collecting and that we're collecting internally is um easily accessible um is displayed in a way that's useful and makes sense um they've done a really great job putting that all together all of my security worries are going off right now. And but I know you're the electrical engineer, and I shouldn't ask you about VLE encryption strategies. we don't necessarily have or a lot of challenges that we don't necessarily have to overcome because we're not collecting people's names or anything like that.

It's really just raw data. I'm sure somebody somewhere could figure out a way to link your nervous twitching of your leg with your identity. I was thinking, well, big names, sports stars would be identifiable. Never mind.

This person dunked at 3.30 p.m. on Tuesday, so it's got to be this guy who I was watching on TV. That's not a challenge we've had yet to face. So these, do you do a lot of work in the medical space with these? So we are, we're definitely thinking about things sort of in those terms for the future. But I mean,

anytime you're looking at putting things on people, there are definitely things that you have to think about. So I think that's actually been one of my favorite things about working at MC10 and sort of in that space where I feel like you have to be more careful and apply more rigor to your processes. And I feel like back when I was doing more consumer based things, you know, you kind of need to be you need something to be good. But when it comes to something like this, I think in this space, you need to make sure that you know what you have, who built it, with what materials, and when. And so when you test something, making sure you know exactly what thing you ran which test on and really kind of understanding what you have is so critical. And I actually really like that element of it because I think it sort of leads to more rigorous testing. You know, it makes people be more careful, more sure of their results.

And there really is a lot more rigor that goes into testing and making sure, you know, here are our requirements, did we meet our requirements, and really carefully following sort of a product development pipeline. So it's in other industries, these are definitely considerations, sort of, but in our industry, they're really strong requirements, and I sort of like understanding that structure. Yeah, I like structures like that. You've mentioned that you enjoy working at MC10, and I think before the show, you told me you were hiring. Do you want to do a little pitch? Sure. So I've really enjoyed my experience at MC10. I've been there for four and a half years and one of the coolest things for me has been that I've really gotten to wear a bunch of different hats. So I think I mentioned before I've just really had a lot of cross-functional

experience which has been awesome but when I started working at before, I've just really had a lot of cross-functional experience, which has been awesome. But when I started working at MC10, I was doing PCB layouts, sort of helping to define what the platform would look like. I was doing electrical debugging, electrical design, and then sort of both analog and digital. So there was a lot of sort of design work there. Um, but I've also had this opportunity to work in product development, which has been awesome doing verification and validation testing, um, defining requirements. Um, and then also sort of, um, working with partners and outside the company to sort of validate our products. And so I think one of the best things about MC10 is whatever you're interested in, there's a lot of places and a lot of different things that you can get your hands in because we're such a small company. So we're definitely hiring right now. We're looking mostly for software positions, but I think we also have an embedded systems position and an electrical engineering position.

So all of our openings are available on our website. It's www.mc10inc.com slash careers. And if anyone's interested in sending in a resume, the email address is careers at mc10inc.com. So we'd love to hear from anyone who is interested in a software or electrical engineering position. And MC10 really just has been a wonderful experience for me. So we'd love to have you come in for an interview. And of course, I'll have shown that information in the show notes. The email is on their website, so I won't include that one. I don't think we've mentioned where they are.

Oh, that's a good idea. Are you in Boston? Yeah, so we are located in Lexington, Massachusetts, which is about 20, 25 minutes outside of the city. And we actually have only been there about a year. We were in Davis Square previously in Cambridge, but we've been there about a year. So we've got this new, big, awesome office space with, you know, ping pong tables and a climbing wall and meditation space. So the best part actually though, is we have tons of lab space. So in our previous office,

our lab space was a little small. And so now we can really spread out and try things. And yeah, I really like the lab space. I agree. I've worked at a couple of startups and I get pretty annoyed when there's a ping pong table, but the lab is too small. Right?

Oh, come on. What are your priorities here? That's why you just put your gear onto the ping pong table that's happened well i think we definitely have our priorities in the right order uh we have a table but we also have a ton of lab space so so i have a question from a friend at wpi um except i don't understand the question So can you tell me what are wedge rats? Ah, so wedge rats were the kids who hung out in, it was sort of a wedge shaped lounge

between Morgan and Daniel's dorm halls. And so later on they moved to a new space in the new campus center, which was dubbed the octowedge because it was an octagonal room. But specifically, they were usually the kids who were hanging out there at all hours playing Dungeons and Dragons or Magic the Gathering, or I'm not sure if you're familiar with live action role playing or LARPing. Let's just say, let's pretend that I'm not. So, it usually involves sort of a Dungeons and Dragons-like thing where it's sort of acted out instead of being conducted on a tabletop. So there are a lot of foam swords. Your magic missiles are made out of beanbags and you can throw them at people. And so the group of kids that were usually heavily involved in those sorts of activities

hung out in the wedge. Um, and so I'm not exactly sure where the name came from, um, or if it was sort of self imposed, but they were known as the wedge rats. Um, and so they could be seen all over campus, but if you ever really wanted to find them going to the wedge between Morgan and Daniels was the place to go. I remember tripping over LARPers trying to get to dinner more than once. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Okay, so now that that has been explained, it sounds like I already know the answer of are you a wedge rat? I was not a wedge rat. I definitely had some pretty nerdy hobbies, especially in college. And I did live in Morgan my freshman year. So the wedge was between me and the dining hall. So I definitely spent some time there, but I would not self identify as a wedge rat. Wedge rat sympathetic. You mentioned working on lasers. Christopher, do you have any laser questions?

I just want to hear all about it. Well, I've worked on lasers in the past, but mostly from my control side. And you mentioned the power supplies, and that was always an area that fascinated me, but it may depend on what kind of lasers you were working on and how interesting that is. The ones I worked on were kind of boring.

They were diode-pumped fiber lasers, so it was kind of you flip a switch and the power supply does its thing but there were the other kinds that were the big flash lamp pumped ones those always fascinated me because you need a lot of power to drive those so did did you work on all kinds of lasers or tell me about what you did yeah so my company was um it was jpsa laser um they actually got bought out by ipg photonics oh all right, all right. I know all about IPG. Oh, there you go.

So yeah, so we made mostly Examer lasers, which are UV. But we also did some work with DPSS lasers. But Examer was really the big thing. But they were pretty high power. So I definitely did a lot of high-powered design. And so that was really cool. The design considerations for high-powered stuff are completely different from sort of the small-scale stuff that we do at MC10. But it's funny because in college, I used to build Tesla coils.

And then going from building Tesla coils to building lasers was not a big difference um there the the technology is actually very similar right you're sort of stepping up voltage um and then you need it to to fire at a specific frequency um and so there were a lot of skills that translated pretty well. One of the challenges we had was we needed to deliver short pulses, but they needed to be of fixed energy. So we had to kind of monitor the power output of the laser over time to make sure that we weren't over delivering. And that was easy enough with the solid state lasers. But once we moved to co2 lasers that got really challenging because they don't really behave yeah there were definitely a lot of challenges there and we were using them um for semiconductor scribing okay um so you specifically um we did

a lot of sapphire some silicon but one of the challenges is uh you want to make sure that you essentially hit it hard enough to cut it but you don't want to sort of burn a giant swath through your your wafer um because if if you're inconsistent or if your your sort of path is too wide you end up losing a lot of material and it's expensive material and then you can't put as many leds or chips or whatever on your wafer so that was definitely one of the design challenges is just making sure that your power output was both you know consistent and where you wanted it to be what i'm sorry lasers they were cool but i'm not quite sure what you two are talking about lasers yeah i mean lasers so one of one of the big reasons i actually stopped working on lasers Lasers. They're cool, but I'm not quite sure what you two are talking about. Lasers. Yeah. I mean, lasers. So one of the big reasons I actually stopped working on lasers and started working at MC10 is lasers are super cool.

But I think what I do now is actually cooler. And the reason for that is, you know, we've kind of known how lasers work for 50 years. Forever. Forever. It's a pretty well understood technology. And so I've actually really enjoyed sort of the design challenges at MC10 because we're doing things that no one's ever really done before. We're making things thinner, smaller. And with that comes a number of challenges like making things more power efficient, right? If you need something super tiny, you don't want to have a huge battery on it. And if you're not going to have a huge battery, then you need to be really power efficient. So I think that the design challenges that we faced at MC10 were,

to me anyway, more interesting than doing stuff with lasers. But the lasers are definitely pretty cool. But I think this is cooler. You know, in the last last week i have seen three or four different articles about power generation um you stole my question heat from skin or fish scales that one i totally didn't get but it was neat wait what fish scales yeah they were generating power rubbing fish scales together you were just moving and it didn't make any sense, but it was kind of cool. And I can see how if you could get rid of a battery and do even one-tenth of what you can do with a battery, it would be incredibly magical because then you could be that thin and on the skin are you and i'm realizing as i'm talking i can't really ask you are you working on these right now because you're not going to be able to say yes um so one thing i can say right is that if you look at how nfc works um you can actually make passive electronics that, where the NFC device powers them. So there are things like that.

Oh, sure. But I probably can't go into any great detail in any other direction. It was the other technologies, the ones that aren't as thoroughly understood as NFC, that they do seem to be coming out often. Are you watching the other technologies? Absolutely. And I think one of the, to go back to your sci-fi question of, you know, what's going to be possible someday as chips get lower and lower power and, you know, we're sort of standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to, you know, how small can you make things? It's like, you know, technology just keeps getting better and things get more power efficient and the less

power you need, the less power you would need to generate. So, um, I can't really specifically talk about anything that we're doing, um, future leaning at MC 10. Um, but I definitely keep an eye on the way that, uh, people are able to generate power. And I think it's absolutely fascinating. I mean, even back, you know, 10 years ago, I was looking at Peltier devices, which, you know, essentially allow you to generate electricity from heat differentials. And so, you know, we encourage building devices. You say Peltier devices,

and I think using electricity to separate cold and hot and you're doing it the other way which totally works but i i'm sorry i was i was backwards there go ahead yeah no that's okay um i think one is this uh don't quote me on this maybe but one is i think is the seebeck effect and the other is the peltier. And so if you're using a Peltier device, you can, if you have a massive heat differential, you can use that to generate electricity. And so when I was in college, we were actually using Peltier devices just, you know, for fun, for school projects or whatever, to try to see, you know, what are the, in what applications do you have major heat differentials? How much power can you generate and what can you do with it? So I think that's a really cool

engineering question that, you know, I think some people are definitely using that the way that you're describing where you apply electricity and, you know, you can use it for heat sinker, whatever it is that you're trying to heat or cool. We're cooling things. But for generating electricity, I think it's definitely got potential as do a number of these other technologies that are coming out. I think it's a really cool field. Okay. Speaking of fields, electrical engineering is a discipline that is changing. And it seems to like your career has sort of tracked the change, maybe been on the accelerated part, but it used to be mostly analog,

and then it became mostly digital. And to some extent, it's about platforms and really shiny new technologies. Do you agree with that? Has it changed for you? Where do you think discipline is going as a whole? I think it's definitely changing. Electrical engineering is definitely changing. Again, I think one of the best things about that is how strong a foundation we really have to build on,

right? It's like, you know, 50 years ago, everyone was kind of doing everything from scratch. And now it's like, we sort of have this foundation where the tools are really getting better. So for instance, I've mostly focused in my career on system level design as opposed to IC design. And so the understanding of how things work and what is possible is improving. Chips are getting better, smaller, less power hungry. And that means we have more of an opportunity to make things smaller, better, and really innovate in ways that are very different from what used to be possible. So I think that it's definitely changing. It's definitely getting better. And I also think that having tools like the MC10 Biostamp RC really sort of opens the

door to doing a lot of algorithm development and data analysis. And so I think that that's sort of a direction that is very interesting because when you sort of have all of these things that can collect all of this incredible data, figuring out where to look or having the opportunity to look at so many different things really sheds a lot of light on all of the important things like how people move. So it's also been really interesting for me as an electrical engineer and how different my career has been from what I would have thought had you asked me when I was a student what my career would look like. I feel like when you're in school, you think you'll spend your whole career designing circuits, laying them out, testing them. And for some people, I'm sure that's true. But for me, it's been really cool to have a technical background, but also sort of get to see

how a company fits together to get exposure to how requirements are defined, the whole product development process, doing verification and validation testing, essentially making sure that you know what you have, that it does what it's supposed to do, and that what it does is the right way to solve the problem that you set out to solve. But it's completely different from what I thought I was going to be doing. And I think that's actually a good thing for me, just because I've gotten to see so many more things and sort of come to understand how everything fits together. Um, so that's been really cool, even if it wasn't quite what I expected.

That's one of those things that comes from working at small companies, um, getting to see, you know, all aspects of it are being forced to. Absolutely. For me, it wasn't as much forced. I think I'm really lucky to have sort of had that opportunity and, you know, sort of get to wear all of the different hats. And I've been lucky too that I've had a lot of really great mentors in my career who have sort of made sure that I've gotten to have those experiences. So I'm very grateful for that. You haven't mentioned manufacturing much, but I imagine manufacturing these patches is non-trivial. Yeah, you can't just go to a PCB house and say, make it like this. manufacturing much. But I imagine manufacturing these patches is non-trivial. Yeah, you can't just go to a PCB house and say, make it like this.

Yeah, that is definitely been a major challenge, is sort of designing for manufacturability, finding the right people to work with, and figuring out sort of what you can do, what you can't do, what you can do, but you need to do a little differently than you thought. Um, so manufacturer ability is, is definitely a major challenge in this field. Um, and I probably can't get into too much detail on, on how we do that. Um, sort of the, the secret sauce there, but. But it is secret sauce. It's not something, you know, you're not going to have somebody undercut you by going to a random production house and saying, oh, give us this method.

Yeah, it is definitely a little more complicated than sort of your run of the mill rigid PCB. That's for sure. Well, I think we're almost out of time. Christopher, I believe you have another question. Yes. If someone were interested in making Tesla coils, how would they go about learning to get into that? And would you advise them to stay away lest they blow themselves up? And what would you advise their wife if she was not entirely in favor of it, but wouldn't mind having a Tesla coil? Um, so I think safety is very important.

Um, and so before I even started reading up on Tesla coils, I would start by reading about, uh, high voltage, uh, safety. Um, and so I was very lucky to have, um, a professor at WPI, Professor Alex Emanuel, who was absolutely amazing and super helpful when it came to making sure that we were kind of doing things safely and pointing us to good resources. But I think actually one of the hardest things is sourcing your materials. When we were building them, and as far as I know, current knowledge also suggests that you want to start by getting some neon sign transformers and then kind of taking it from there. But there are a lot of great websites these days, even more so than there were 10 years ago, where you can kind of buy all of the pieces that you need to actually put together a Tesla coil. So the Internet's a great place.

And don't be afraid to get creative. There's a part of a Tesla coil. So the internet's a great place. And don't be afraid to get creative. There's a part of a Tesla coil called a Corona ring. And so when we were building ours, a lot of people take a styrofoam ring and wrap it in aluminum foil. And basically what the Corona ring does is it protects the top of your secondary coil. Because if you have an arc

to the top of your secondary coil, it'll basically burn through the insulation on your mag wire and short your secondary coil. Uh, cause if you have an arc to the top of your secondary coil, uh, it'll basically burn through the insulation on your mag wire and short your secondary coil all the way down and completely ruin it. So you put this corona ring around the top, um, so that if there are any arcs that don't go to where you expect them to, um, they'll go to this corona ring that's at the same potential as your, your sphere, your point or whatever it is you're trying to connect to so for us instead of wrapping a foam ring in aluminum foil we wanted something that looked cooler so we actually convinced a local muffler shop to bend weld and grind down a piece of muffler pipe so that our corona rings would be made out of like this real heavy solid metal and they did

it and it came out amazing so I think the the real thing was for us you know there were definitely some places where we had to get creative where we couldn't find something we couldn't find something in time for this big show we wanted to put on this spark party WPI that we wanted to put on but we we were able to sort of find some local people to help us out and our professors were super supportive. So that was awesome. Do you have more Tesla coils planned? Maybe when I finish this house.

Renovating a house has been taking up most of my free time for a long time. And there are definitely a lot of a lot of ways we've had to get creative here too um but so maybe when the house is a little bit more finished um i i've always kind of thought about having having a few more giant tesla coils hanging around so um definitely possible and i actually recently acquired some new neon sign transformers so it's definitely in the back of my head maybe i'll just start with the jacob's ladder you know that's actually a great place to start because it really sort of gets you, um, gets you thinking in high voltage and gets you thinking about kind of what's possible and

more used to using the equipment, but just be safe, ground anything out before you, uh, before you touch it, keep in mind that your capacitor banks actually do hold a lot of charge. So, uh, you know, if you, even if you think they're fully discharged, discharged, touch them, throw them in the bathtub first. Yeah, exactly. Um, so just make sure that everything's discharged before you touch anything. Um, and just be careful, but I think it's, it's a really, it's been a really great experience for me. Building Tesla Coils has always been one of my favorite pastimes. I'll just have Igor do it. There you go. All right. I think we could talk about Tesla Coils for a lot longer.

But so that we can all get back to our weekends, Brianna, do you have any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Just working at MC10 has been a really unbelievable experience for me. I really enjoyed my time there and we are definitely hiring. So if you're looking for something new, something in Lexington, Massachusetts, email careers at mcteninc.com with your resume or check out the open positions at www.mc10inc.com slash careers. All right. Our guest has been Brianna Mori, Senior Electrical Engineer, Clinical Development and Product Validation at MC10 Inc. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. And of course, thank you for listening. Hit the contact link on Embedded FM. If you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. And of course, thank you for listening.

Hit the contact link on Embedded FM if you would like to say hello, sign up for the newsletter, or subscribe to the YouTube channel. So now we have a final thought. This week from HP Lovecraft. Pleasure to me is wonder, the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks beneath superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate, the eternal in the

ephemeral, the past and the present, the infinite in the finite, these are to me the springs of delight and beauty. Embedded FM is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive any revenue from them. At this time, our sole sponsor remains Logical Elegance.