Heath W. Rogers / Ceraplex Corp                          7797 S. Old St. Rd. 37

                                                                                                                    Bloomington IN 47403

                                                                                                                    Ph      Email Initially

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                                                                                                                    Email Heath@Ceraplex.com

 

Senior Embedded Software / Firmware Engineer

 

Summary:                    18 years development experience in C and Assembler exclusively with embedded products

Exceptionally strong C / Assembler and debugging skills

Real time operating system development

TCP/IP Stack ports and Ethernet driver development

Communications protocol development

Chip card Payment Systems (Conditional Access Management)

RFID / Proximity cards / ISO 15693 / 14443A & B / PayPass

Low-level implementation of electronic interfaces

Specialize in debit card encoding (HiCo Mag Multi format)

Windows 16/32/NT API device drivers and services

Digital Electronics Design (Schematics and PCB layouts)

OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

CCD Integration / Linear and Quad

 

Electronics:                  Through Hole & SMT Designs (SMT preferred, Single ~ 6 Layers)

Schematics / PCB Layout and Design (I normally provide a ‘kit’ that is used to have PCB’s produced and a contract assembly house produce the final product, Gerbers / BOM etc)

                                    Limited Mechanical (some CAD / Plastic mold layouts)

 

Processors:                  ARM 7 & 9 (Very StrongParticularly porting from 7 to 9 and MMU issues)

Intel 8051 (Very Strong)

Siemens - Infineon C167, C165, C161 and XC series (Very Strong)

Intel x86 (Very Strong)

Zilog Z80 / Rabbit (Strong)

Microchip PIC 16/17xx (Limited Work)

                                                                                         

Languages:                  Assembly

C

Visual C

Visual Basic

Pascal

 

RFID Payment              PayPass (MasterCard/VisaCard ISO14443a/b). Several implementations sold / both Antenna designs and firmware that is fully compliant.

 

Magnetic Encoding &   Magnetic stripe encoding (HiCo > 3000 orsted & LowCo / Standard Credit Cards)

Debit Cards                  Intimate understanding of the formats and layouts of ACT – ICT – XCP – DAC – DebitekDaynlDiebold – General Meters – CopiCardVerifone etal.

Protocols:                    I2C

                                    SPI

C.A.N.

MDB vending protocol / Payment systems for Coin/Cash acceptors

Ethernet SNAP, 802.2, 802.3, IPX / SPX

HDLC, PPP, LCP, ICMP, UDP, IP, TCP

ISO 14443A & B – PayPass (MasterCard Intl & Visa Intl)

ISO 7816 Level 1 ~ 4

RS485 multi drop

Asynchronous / Synchronous Serial Links

Dallas Semiconductor 1 Wire interfaces / Touch memory

 

TCP/IP Stack Ports:      CMX / RTIP

                                    Elmic / Trek

                                    InterNiche

 

Cryptology:                  DES

MD4 / MD5

RC2 / RC4 / RC5 / RC6

Dieffie-Hellman

 

Operating Systems:     uCos/II

                                    CMX

DOS

Windows 95/98/NT/XP

SCO & Linux UNIX

 

Development Tools:     In-circuit emulators

Logic Analyzers

Processor Simulators

Assemblers

C/C++ Compilers

 

Interfaces:                    Philips Transceivers RC500 ~ RC632 Development

                                    miFare ISO 14443A Implementation (Levels 1~2 & miFare specific)

                                    Variety of Proximity interfaces for Debit and Access control (Weigand & ABA Track 2)

Vending Machine control protocols / IMDB

Magnetic Card Read / Write (F2F – TDE – ABA – Thrift)

Payment Protocols (Bill – Coin acceptors)

Ethernet Drivers / MAC (Fujitsu – SMC – Crystal – RealTek – ATMEL ARM9 RM9200)

Various PHY support programming for MAC implementations

Graphics LCD (Controller – Back Lighting – Font Conversion – GUI)

Touch Screen (4 Wire – 5 Wire – Capacitive – Infrared – Deflection)

Audio (PCM – ADPCM – m-Law – A-Law – WAV Converters)

IDE Hard drive, low level control through embedded processors

Motor Control (Sinusoidal Stepper Motor Control)

Alphanumeric Pager transmission – protocol conversion

 

Objectives:                   Ceraplex Corp is a S-CORP that I use for all contracting. I only contract Corp-Corp (no W2 or 1099). The projects of particular interest are any utilizing the ARM 7 & 9 / Infineon C16X and 8051 series of microcontrollers, Debit / Credit readers / Access Control (Prox or Mag) and communications orientated designs.

 

                                    I prefer all work to be offsite (I have a complete lab for software and electronics design – this includes all tools as listed above) and I allow for regular on-site meetings. For short-term contracts (less than 9 weeks) I am available for fulltime onsite work.

 

                                    Please keep in mind that I am always open to thoughts ideas etc on work. Given the cost of re-locating a family of six I have found it prohibitive to consider moving hence why I established an ‘S’ Corp.

 

Work History:

 

            2006                 Hexagram Corporation (Contract).

 

Hexagram is the primary provider for telemetry systems to Gas/Water & Electrical companies in the United States and Canada. Their systems use UHF & Cellular communication from a field endpoint to a collection unit with the data then being forwarded to the billing utility.

 

This contract involved writing a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet driver for an Atmel ARM9 processor with full support for a Micrel Phy. The implementation was using the uCos/II operating system and InterNiche Protocol stack.

 

Hexagram also required a refactoring of their current code base which involved :-

 

Fully interrupt driver serial support (both TX/RX and out band CTS/RTS)

Memory management support (programming the MMU via table driven structure)

AIC Common handler

PIO handler / fully table driver for IRQ servicing and instantiation

Clock programming (Table driven for each clock source / Master / Perph / USB etc)

 

Verification of schematics for primary & auxiliary boards (Ethernet Copper/Fiber & Wireless)  

                                   

            2005 ~ 2006      Mars Electronics Incorporated (Contract)

 

                                    M.E.I is a world leader in manufacturing Bill & Currency acceptors which are used to accept payment in the vending and gaming industry.

 

                                    Ceraplex developed an infield retro fit board for their SC-60 Currency validator that communicates with a proximity tag embedded inside the removable cashbox. This allows for the cashbox to be interrogated in the counting room as to its exact contents, it also meets Casino regulations that no electrical interface be present.

 

The board composed of an 8051 Flash microprocessor and a Philips RC500 IS14443a transceiver. The IS14443a protocol stack was also provided with a full PCB kit (Schematics / BOM / PCB layout) for production by Ceraplex.

 

A fully functional ‘Proof’ was produced for this product.

 

In addition to the ‘Easy Trax’ project Ceraplex also provided a complete PCB Kit for manufacture of a display to be used with their bill acceptors, analog SPI communications with DC-DC converter and current drivers for LED outputs.

 

            2004 ~ 2006      ITC Systems (Contract)

 

                                    ISO14443a & 14443b proximity reader for PayPass (MasterCard & Visa) payment systems.

 

This job entailed providing a fully functional PayPass reader as a ‘Proof’ with all Schematics/Bill of Materials and firmware for certification/validation by MasterCard Intl.

 

The predominant development was Firmware on an 8051 platform written in ‘C’ that met the certification requirements of MasterCard Intl for operation with credit cards.

 

            2003 ~ 2005      BECS Technologies (Contract)

 

Provided all firmware and electronic design for manufacture of a miFare door access controller. This unit also allowed for Half/Full duplex RS485 design.

 

            2002 ~ 2004      Anne Reid Technologies (Contract)

                                    General support of legacy debit card designs based on the MF200 miFare transceivers.

 

            2000 ~ 2004      Chesterfield Holdings (Contract)

Design of an optical scanner for CR80 type credit cards (Standard credit / Identity cards).

 

This project entailed not only the electronics to scan the card (stepper motor and Linear CCD) but to also provide OCR of text contained on the card. In essence it was a motorized card reader that optically scanned the card, and then authenticated the information printed on the card through OCR. The optics was designed such that it could also detect and extract holographic images.

 

Some of the biggest hurdles dealt with in this project were the control of stepper motors and the Linear CCD that captured the image. Two patents were issued to Chesterfield holdings, one joint and one single. I was instrumental in all facets of the design of this system, being processor board, mechanics and optical systems.

 

The patents & applications involved are registered as:

 

20030150907   October 19, 2001

20030178487   October 18, 2002

 

These can be viewed at www.uspto.gov under Published Applications.

 

            2001 ~ 2003      Access Control Technologies (Contract)

Designed a door access controller utilizing Philips RC500 transceiver for ISO 14443A cards (aka miFare). The project initially started out as a small redesign so that ACT could cease using the Phillips MF200 transceiver (hybrid chip and very expensive) and move to the newer RC500 part. Unlike the MF200 the RC500 was a ‘dumb’ device and as such the ISO 14443 protocol layers also needed to be coded.

 

This project required that the Schematics, PCB layout and BOM used by a contract manufacturer be produced for production.

 

All firmware was also written by myself, which allowed transaction tracking, online alarm monitoring and secure communications with an online host. The largest part of this system was dealing with the ISO 14443 layers (1~4) and that of interfacing with the new RC500 transceiver.

 

            2000 ~ 2006      Vorne Industries (Contract)

Lead firmware engineer for development of new display system (large multiplexed LED displays used primarily in manufacturing to show efficiency).

 

Apart from firmware design and implementation, I was personally instrumental in the primary design (beit FPGA or other ancillary parts) and PCB layout. These displays were some 3 – 12 foot in length and up to 3 foot in height, and provided real-time information to workers on a production line as to productivity, cycle time, OEE and TAKT time.

 

The unit used a C161 processor with 2 Megs of Flash, 1 Meg of SRAM and 256K of I2C addressable storage. It also entailed the use of a soft programmable FPGA for driving the LED matrix (up to 240 x 160).

 

During this time I ported the following RTOS & TCP/IP stacks:

 

CMX RTOS

CMX TCP/IP Stack

Elmic TCP/IP Stack

InterNiche TCP/IP Stack

 

                                    I also wrote the following utilities and firmware:

 

                                    Graphical LED Driver (high speed DMA transfer to FPGA)

                                    Windows Font generator / translator (allowing fonts to be embedded)

                                    Graphics Library (Routines for drawing and positioning graphics)

                                    Font Library (Allowed rendering of proportional fonts at arbitrary points)

                                    I2C Library (Fully interrupt driven)

                                    RS232/485 Drivers (Fully interrupt driven)

                                    SMSC 91C96 Ethernet Driver

 

1997 ~ 2002      Access Solutions (Contract)

Contracted to develop an online debit terminal. I was responsible for all facets of this projects design.

 

The project was broken down into a single core component of a CPU board, which mated with a baseboard for a particular project. This has allowed a common CPU board to be used in 4 different products all utilizing common core firmware.

 

The core design incorporates a Siemens C165 16 Bit Microcontroller, 256K ~ 1 Meg Non Volatile Static Ram, OKI MSM6255 Graphic LCD Controller, OKI MSM6588 ADPCM Audio Codec, Touch Screen ADC, Real Time Clock, Ethernet MAC, DC-DC Converter, LCD Contrast control, and a high voltage CCFL backlight circuit.

 

I designed the Electronics (Analog and Digital), and a PCB that used double-sided component placement and was a 6 layer board.

 

I wrote a preemptive RTOS with a cooperative scheduler for the CPU board. The RTOS consisted of a time slicer, scheduler, exception handler, memory management (all far memory virtualized), differential timer routines, graphics library, font renderer, audio playback/record, touch screen support, Arcnet, Ethernet, PPP / UDP / IP stack, synchronous and asynchronous serial (232/485).

 

The application libraries I wrote consisted of MD4 / MD5 / DES / RC4 / RC5 Crypto, F2F / TDE timing analyzer, ISO 7816 Transport (Chip card), 16/32 Bit CRC Generator, and a fully featured Graphical User Interface with full touch support.

 

I also wrote the following development tools:

 

True Type Font converter to embedded font (Mono and Gray Scale)

BMP file converter to embedded image (True color reduction)

WAV file converter to OKI 4Bit ADPCM embedded audio file

Post processor for Rom to include CRC signing of code segments

In circuit programmer of Static RAM / Flash for program load

 

A Manufacturing Test System was developed to aid in quality control during production. The test system is a mixture of C165 Assembler / ‘C’ for the test unit firmware, a Visual Basic interface with ‘C’ DLL’s for controlling the firmware. This test system allows for every circuit to be exercised after production to pin point any problems.

 

The initial product was a debit terminal that consisted of a 320 x 240 Graphics LCD, with touch screen and Ethernet connectivity. It accepts Magnetic Stripe cards on Tracks 1,2,3, Dallas Touch Memory, and Chip Cards. It has external control of a foreign device through 6 protected I/O lines.

 

The second product produced was a Cashier that contained all the elements of the debit terminal and also has a Bill Acceptor, Card Dispenser, Receipt printer, Security Alarm and a cash vault.

 

The third product was a print controller that used the debit terminal connected via a synchronous RS485 link (2.5 Mbits/Sec) to two delivery controllers. The delivery controllers sent data to the printers and monitored the number of pages printed and then reported usage back to the debit terminal.

 

The fourth product was a time and attendance terminal that reported back to a PC with accounting software.

 

1994 ~ 1997      BBM Technologies (Contract)

Contracted from Australia and relocated by BBM to the United States for the design of a Debit payment system utilizing Magnetic stripe and chip card technologies. I was responsible for all facets of this projects design.

 

This system was developed using a Dallas DS5001 (8051 variant) with 128K of Non Volatile Static Ram, and a LCD Dot Matrix display. I developed all firmware in a mixture of ‘C’ and assembler. Low-level routines were coded in assembler as ‘black box’ functions with all flow control of the system being written in ‘C’.

 

Designed all PCB’s and layout using surface mount technology. Designed all mechanical aspects of the reader, board placement, motor and magnetic head placement and metal work.

 

To facilitate networking an ARCNET interface was developed using a Standard Microsystems COM20010 Arcnet controller. Wrote all associated driver firmware and designed the dipulse line interface unit.

 

For reliable reading/writing to a magnetic card the motor used must be of exceptional quality with a very high RPM driven through a reduction gearbox to reduce ‘Jitter’. These motors are a major production cost. To reduce this cost I developed a sinusoidal driving circuit so we could use inexpensive stepper motors. By driving the motor with a Sin/Cosine waveform the motor would run without the traditional step movement. These motors have very high torque, which allowed it to direct drive the transport rollers without an additional gearbox.

 

1989 ~ 1994      B.E.A.R. Solutions (Co Owner)

Principal firmware engineer for a motorized magnetic card reader used in debit payment applications. The system entailed an 8 Bit microcontroller (8051 + PIC) with 32K of nonvolatile static ram. All development for this product was in assembler to reduce memory requirements. This product was slated for high volume low cost markets.

 

An error free sliding window communications protocol was incorporated allowing the product to be networked via RS485 multidrop. All read/write operations to the card were in either F2F or TDE format, with support for multiple competitor data definitions. This allowed the reader to read and write eight different formats giving superior market penetration as it could be used in environments with other vendor equipment.

 

Developed a proprietary card format that utilized Reed-Solomon encoding allowing for damaged magnetic stripes to be successfully decoded. All data in this format was DES encrypted to deter card tampering.

 

Developed all firmware for an Add Value Station. This station contained a magnetic card encoder with a Bill and coin acceptor, a card dispenser, and a receipt printer.  The unit would accept payment from users and then encode the value onto a card. This design was a dual processor utilizing 8051 and 8086 processors. The 8051 firmware was a mixture of assembly and C, as was the 8086 firmware. The 8051 controlled all functions of the card encoder, bill acceptor and card dispenser while the 8086 displayed instructional information to the user on a VGA screen and controlled the receipt printer. Developed an in house BIOS for the 8086 platforms used in embedded projects. An internally developed RTOS was also used.

 

 


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Copyright(c) 1995 - 2006 Heath Rogers and Software Contractors' Guild, 3 Country Club Dr., #303, Manchester, NH USA 03102