Hardware handholding

?

I wouldn't work on something like this under the terms you present. Use that MBA of yours and ask if you'd chase "lots of work later" in return for free or heavily discounted work now. And if you do find someone to work on your terms, will you be saying "tee hee"? Or will you be saying "oh, this one must be a fool."? And if the latter, why do you want them working for you?

Perhaps you should look up "equity" in the dictionary.

Even then, every consultant in the world gets offered equity, so expect that if you do attract some talent it'll be a frustrated (or laid-off)

9-5er.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

I am the great scientist. I have the tremendous top secret idea that=20 will change the world. I need someone to explain me 2+2=3D4, so we can ge= t=20 the project started. I have no money but I promise the royal rewards and =

honors: you may be hired as the oarsman for my galley. How about that?

VLV

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Yes, I know all about equity. Enough to know it is nonsensical to pay someone equity potentially worth millions (and clearly, just as potentially worth nothing) for a few hours worth of work. If a few hundred bucks are too little to pay for some handholding for someone who has demonstrated the willingness to learn from books then I guess I get to go through the learning curve myself. On the other hand, if the handholding is successful and the product comes to fruition then why shouldn't I be happy to stick with a proven quantity and either hire directly or continue consulting with the handhold-ee? Likely an experience and well established consultant gets an offer to trade effort on spec often, and I am sure that many such opportunities lead to nothing, but if just a small percentage result in decades long consulting relationships at top dollar, who is the fool: the one taking the offer and chancing wasting his time or the one who ignores the offer and thus the potential for the business relationship?

If I had a budget, I would simply go to a hardware company and have the work done and not spend my time dealing like this. This is an opportunity for someone who might be interested in an intellectual problem for some pay, perhaps to make it worthwhile for even a professional, well established consultant (and particularly for a student, which is why I pointed that out) that has a chance of more to come, not an offer of no pay now and stock that statistically is likely to be worthless.

Oh, as a btw, I have often done work free on spec (as a biochemist, programmer and MBA), often hundreds of hours, so to me the idea of actually getting paid for work that might lead to more is something I would expect lots of people to be interested in.

Yes, if you come to San Diego, I will hold your hand. Or if you paid my expenses to DC, I will hold both your hands.

Your biggest challenge is to build the semiconductor sensor to detect pico amps. Forget the FPGA, it's not likely critical enough for your project.

The first fool is the one who offers value for nothing. The second fool is the person who hires the first fool, thinking that financial foolishness doesn't extend to technical foolishness.

So again, you have an MBA and you're saying "give me a bunch of value in return for nothing, and _maybe_ later I'll give you an opportunity to give me a lot more value in return for your going rate". So you're offering something that you _know_ that each and every one of your MBA profs would council _you_ against signing up for, yet you expect that you'll find someone who has some magic combination of technical smarts and financial stupidity.

I suppose it'll work if you're charismatic in person.

If the stock is likely worthless, then how worthwhile is the promise of future work later? For me, the likelihood that the future work would be worth anything is (likelihood of company succeeding) * (likelihood that you'll come through on your vague promises) - (likelihood that I'll have to work as much for pay from you as from anyone else). That comes out to something less than zero, while the value of equity works out to (% of company that you're staking) * (likely value of company in the end) * (value adjustment for time spent getting there). _That_ computation always comes out to a positive number; the only quibbling is how small it is.

Now, a signed note that _promises_ that if you gross more than so many $$ a year _guarantees_ work at higher than your putative contractor's going rate, or just plain cash -- that gets closer to the equity value equation, and you don't have to call it "equity". Mostly because it gives your contractor something he can show to a judge when you or your successors decide that you didn't really promise anything, after all.

This has to be MBA logic at work "I'll offer them something that's worth even less than equity, then say they don't want equity because I have no faith in my ability to make it worth anything. That'll convince them."

That's the sort of argument that flies when you're addressing a room full of people who you can fire if they point out the logical deficiencies in your argument, but you're swimming upstream if you think it's going to work with someone whose been successfully running a small business.

Getting your hypothetical student, or consultant who's just starting out may work. In that case the value equation for them is "a bit of money now and something to put on my resume". But even then, I wouldn't counsel _anyone_ to work for vague promises of more work -- unless it's concrete and signed, it's just gas. Further, were I you I wouldn't trust the technical prowess of someone who would agree to provide so much for so little, unless _they_ could show _me_ the value that they're getting beyond the crummy pay that I could scrape up.

Good for you. Did you get more out of it than you put in, or is this why you don't have any $$ to pay your way?

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

LOL...

Despite your sarcasm, at least you provide something more useful than complaining about what a stupid idea my post is.

As I mentioned, I have no clue how practical even detecting the change in current is. I will have a 10 nm or so channel (3-5 nm deep) with a fluid that is mostly water with some number of charged molecules flowing through it. The charged molecules will be around 1 nm in diameter. My goal is to detect the change in current flow between two conductors that are broken by the channel. I know this sort of thing can easily be done on the macro level (conductivity meter), but I also know that things get strange when you get down to the nm and single molecule level. I also know that researchers have been able to put 'patch clamps' on the surface of a cell membrane and measure the movement of charged molecules through pores in the membrane. I have read anecdotal reports that some researchers have been able to isolate single channels in membranes, hence measure the charged molecules moving through a single pore (which, btw, would be smaller than 1 nm), but haven't been able to put my hands on the primary literature which might lead me to the technical means they used to detect the changes.

What I have read makes me think that if I take a lead from an FPGA and connect it with my chip that the level of current might not be so high that it causes the fluid to boil. If it is that simple then doing what I need should be straightforward. If getting that to work is highly unlikely then it indicates that the initial prototype might need embedded circuitry just to know if it has any chance of success, greatly complicating prototyping within my budget.

So, is there a chance for helpful advice from what I thought was a forum devoted to embedded hardware or just more unhelpful comments about how asking for help and being willing to pay for it is a bad thing and subject to ridicule?

Hence, your difficulties will be the nano analog domain, not digital.

No difference with taking a lead from a uC or, parallel pin or serial control pin. Talking FPGA is just irrelevant at best.

Since I have many (minimum 10, ideally at least 100) independent conductors to measure simultaneously, I thought the ability of FPGAs to be programmable to operate in parallel would be better than having a single processor sequentially check each conductor. Even presuming there aren?t problems with propagation delays (I have been warned that such delays will probably put a ceiling on the speed of the monitoring processor), if the duration between each iteration of the serial checking is too large then there exists the possibility to miss a signal. I figure to have a reliable chance to detect the passing of the molecule I need to check at least 10 MHz, probably 100 MHz. To be able to differentiate signal from noise cleanly I will need to repeatedly measure that the same molecule is between the conductors several times before it passes through the detection area. I will have some influence on how long the molecule will be in the conductor area, but the overall throughput is totally dependant on the rate at which the molecules move, so faster measurements are always going to be better, at least until some other rate limiting step is reached.

However, your suggestion of using something less complicated than an FPGA as a proof of concept is well taken. How often might I be able to sample on a serial pin or something equivalent?

Thanks for your input!

You can easily find uC with 50 I/Os. Two of them is far cheaper and easier to deal with then FPGA. Alternatively, a uC with a simple CPLD.

But, first of all, you need 100 amplifiers to bring the nA and nV up to 1 to 2V. You are really asking for a custom analog chip.

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You can sample pins at MHzs, but always get zero if the voltage level is too low anyway.

I thought that you could get FPGAs for not much more than twice that of a CPLD and that it was reasonable to get a 100 pin FPGA for $100 or less. Did I do a poor job of research or is $100 reasonable? At present, I only need a single prototype of the hardware and presuming the chip idea works the relative volume of the embedded hardware will be several orders of magnitude less than that of the chip, so $100 ea. for several FPGAs is not a significant issue.

Can the amplifiers be something as simple as some transistors on a PCB?

I know that ASIC is the way to go, but prototyping those is definitely out of my budget. For a successful commercial product I expect to embed most of the control circuitry on the same chip, which should mitigate much of the concern.

Thanks again for your help!

If you're referring to Vladimir's and my comments, I had no argument with your original post, only suggestions on what you may have to do to get a professional to help you (hint: professional == gets paid).

What you want will take sensitive analog circuitry, which is _not_ what you get inside of an FPGA. Your overall product may end up with an FPGA, but that's a tactical, not a strategic decision.

You said:

-> While this is very low budget, it does have huge economic

-> potential so the usual NDA and consulting restrictions will

-> apply. If you are curious but not so

----> willing to work for peanuts you might still be interested in a bit of a gamble: if the

-> prototyping is successful the revenue potential within the

-> next 12-18 months is such that full-time employment and/or

-> extensive consulting agreements are quite possible as

-> undoubtedly several versions of the embedded hardware will

-> need to be made and the commercial product will require

-> embedded hardware as well as ASIC design.

Later you insist:

-> Yes, I know all about equity. Enough to know it is

-> nonsensical to

----> pay someone equity potentially worth millions

100 MHz bandwidth in pA range (precision is TBD, I assume something modest like 8 bits) is dreamland given your level of expertise as you describe it. It is probably dreamland for anyones level of expertise today, for that, (but I am not sure - I have not looked deeply into it).

As for finding someone to hold your hand... most if not all of what Tim said is correct. There are loads of freelancer cites, I am sure you will locate loads of helpful timewasters there. For a real job like that to be done, you need either to pay its real value or do it yourself.

Didi

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

------------------------------------------------------

Original message:

(snip)

Ludicrous restriction of trade agreements and laughable remuneration offers aside, what bothers me most about this post is the seemingly incongruous level of expertise claimed versus the complete failure to identify the core technical challenges of this project.

The hand-waving over the whole problem of measuring the current in question and the focusing on what is - relatively - a trivial aspect of the solution begs the question as to the validity of the whole project.

"I've got a theory on how to turn lead into gold, but I can't start on it until someone can help me work out how to melt it down into ingots".

Anyway, it was good for a laugh - I especially liked the offer of possible full-time employment if he made it big!!!

Regards,

--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, 
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266

I think you need more details by first checking out some ball park pricing and working out some rough complexities required first. Actually get some real figures to get an idea of what you want.

You do not seem to have a handle of the costs of making your prototypes and incorporating FPGAs, soft cores and the like.

They could be, if you want something potentially drifting with temperature, age, and potentially with low voltage and current input picking up all sorts of stray interference as well.

This looks like a lot of work without a lot more details to work on.

As others have said the FPGA is not your weak point the analog front end is. Which if that is not right means the rest of it might as well be made of chocolate

A lot of ASICs start off as prototype circuits, then go through various design phases to become an ASIC.

One of my customers is a design house and manufacturing for ASICs with customers all over the world and all sorts of requirements. Some of these have 10-20 year lifespans which involve things like respinning the ASIC every 8-10 years as manufacturing processes become obsolete.

--
Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
    PC Services
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Thank those of you who saw fit to provide some helpful advice.

I think we call it "playing fort" over here in rainy California.

[...]

1pA / e = 6E10/s

Oliver

--
Oliver Betz, Munich
despammed.com might be broken, use Reply-To:

On Nov 4, 3:58=A0am, Jim Stewart wrote: mployment if he made it big!!!

And I thought it never rained there (at least in southern California)... :-)

Didi