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Aug 13, 2023

2023 Updates: PhD; Pi Pico

It's 2023 and I'm back to keep the blog going! Lots have changed in my life in the past 6 years since I last posted on the blog.

PhD

After a six-year stint working as a hardware engineer at Apple, I am excited to now be pursuing my PhD in Electrical Engineering, focused on Power Electronics, at UC Berkeley. I start working with Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski this week! I anticipate more posts centered around power electronics in the future.

Why did I want to go back to school in a PhD program? There are 3 key aspects to this:

  1. Technical depth. With the recent rapid advances enabled by wide bandgap semiconductors, the recent explosion in adoption of EVs and an expansion in the number of research labs in academia, now is an exciting time for power electronics.
  2. Positive contributions to climate crisis solutions. Growing up in Bangladesh, I witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of natural disasters that continue to be exacerbated by the climate crisis. Direct impacts of this are witnessed every year half-way across the world in California where I now live. I envision pursuing research opportunities to significantly reduce emissions in the transportation and energy sectors: the largest contributors to the climate crisis and fields that can be directly improved through power electronics.
  3. Education. This blog has been an early testament to my interest in sharing engineering information and knowledge. I would like to continue to do so, but also engage in a more formal manner through educational institutions, particularly with typically underserved institutions.

Pi Pico

In the short term, I am exploring the Raspberry Pi Pico (based on the RP2040 MCU) using MicroPython. Having the resources to support running MicroPython, in a super-cheap part, is an exciting opportunity for me to explore. The idea here is to use Python (very simple software bringup time) to do the software heavy lifting and leveraging on-board hardware for timing-sensitive/hardware applications.

Here is a great relevant podcast episode: The Amp Hour #529 – Embedded Hardware with the Raspberry Pi Team

Why Micropython? Listen to 11:30-12:30 in the linked podcast episode where the below qutoes are taken from.

Computing is just so cheap compared to what it has been historically. That then enables things that are maybe not super efficient, not super tight timing like Micropython but who cares at that point? A lot of people will come in and say things like 'in this benchmark, I found that MicroPython is 100x slower than C' but if your C code is 100x faster than you need, then it doesn't matter. You just write the code you need and you focus on the parts that add value to your project and then you move on to your next project.

14 comments:

  1. That's exciting! Looking forward to your future posts.

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  2. Great to hear you're starting the blog up again, I found your blog when I first started using the TLP250 to drive my power IGBTs in my metal fuelled gridded ion thruster for my MSc Physics

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  3. Happy to see this....welcome

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  4. Hi. You are such a gift to engineering. I count you as my teacher. Am working on the half bridge based on IR2110 that you posted years back. I have stopped burning my mosfet and the driver but the high side is not switching on. What miffy it be?

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    1. Do you have a sufficiently sized bootstrap cap? See this post on the topic: https://tahmidmc.blogspot.com/2023/12/sizing-ir2110-high-side-bootstrap.html
      There could be many other reasons - hard to tell without more details.

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  5. As'salam o Alaikum!
    Congratulation, Tahmid for your PhD.
    Good to hear you again.

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  6. As'salam o Alaikum!
    Congratulation, Tahmid for your PhD.
    Good to hear you again.

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  7. Its really good to have you back our friend and am here to tell you that we have really missed you allot because through this blog you have helped many of us to understand how things are done the easy way and now since you are back, who knows you may even do a post on Modalities of Using the PIC (16F877A) CCP Module - CAPTURE Section to make this topic of the CCP module complete.Thanks for coming back my friend.

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  8. Welcome back Tahmid its really good having your new fresh face

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  9. Congrats vaiya. Best wishes for you. And welcome back again. :)

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  10. ভাইয়া মাইক্রোকন্ট্রোলার এবং ইলেকট্রনিক্স নিয়ে প্রোজেক্ট লিখলে অনেক ভালো হতো।

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    Replies
    1. কি রকমের প্রজেক্ট?

      Delete
  11. "Welcome back, Mr. Temid! Your insightful posts on power electronics in 2017 and 2018 were invaluable to me and many others in the electrical engineering community. Your return to this platform is eagerly anticipated, and I look forward to learning more from your expertise. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and welcome back!"

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