S5E8 Stephen B. Johnson | Embedded Systems, Python, & Personal Engineering Projects

In this episode, Stephen shares his career journey, from early influences that led him to engineering to his experiences in the Marine Corps and various engineering roles. He discusses the technical challenges he faced, such as working on the Patriot 2 missile at Raytheon and the innovative solutions he implemented. Stephen also talks about his passion for personal engineering projects, including an automated sprinkler system and a home security system, and the inspiration behind these projects. He provides advice for aspiring leaders and discusses the importance of personal projects in maintaining engineering skills.

Main Topics:

• Stephen's early influences and decision to pursue engineering
• Experiences in the Marine Corps and technical challenges in the industry
• Transition to Surecon Corporation and personal engineering projects
• Development of the automated sprinkler system and home security system
• Advice for aspiring leaders and the value of personal projects

About the guest: Stephen Johnson's engineering journey began with his service in the United States Marine Corps from 1987 to 1992. During this time, he worked on F/A-18 airframes with VMFA-333 "Fighting Shamrocks" and served in the Marine Corps Security Forces aboard the USS Wisconsin and USS Kitty Hawk during the Gulf War. These experiences instilled in him a strong foundation in discipline and technical precision.

After his military service, Stephen pursued a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University, graduating in 1996. He was actively involved in Epsilon Tau Sigma, serving as Treasurer for two years. His early career included a role as a Design Engineer at Raytheon Electronic Systems, where he worked on the Patriot II Missile Systems and the Milstar Satellite Program, focusing on automatic test equipment for power systems and satellite communications.

Transitioning to the embedded systems industry, Stephen joined Heurikon Corporation as a Support Engineer. The company, which later became Artesyn Technologies and was eventually acquired by Emerson Electric, provided him with opportunities to work on embedded computer boards and systems, including cPCI, cPSB, ATCA, and VME designs. He also developed Board Support Packages (BSPs) for VxWorks and supported Linux for embedded systems.

In 2008, Stephen joined TDS Telecommunications LLC, where he initially focused on implementing and maintaining IPTV elements, from content providers to set-top boxes. Over the years, he advanced to the role of Network Consultant, working on the Server & Applications team for VoIP infrastructure and the Cable TV Platform. His expertise includes Python programming, systems design, and electrical engineering. Recently, he has been working with the core network and developing tools to automate various processes, reflecting his passion for automating tasks that humans should not be doing.

Beyond his p

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Steven B. Johnson's Career Journey and Early Influences
• 4:25 Challenges and Achievements in the Marine Corps
• 15:57 Transition to Surecon Corporation and Personal Projects
• 21:19 Development of the Automated Sprinkler System
• 25:21 Home Security System and Personal Projects
• 31:19 Advice for Aspiring Leaders and Technical Innovations
• 38:45 Listener Engagement and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Stephen B. Johnson: 0:00

There's really two areas of leadership, right? There's technical leadership, and then there's a management that in either one lead by example, I'm not going to ask somebody to do something that if I wouldn't be willing to do it myself.

Aaron Moncur: 0:27

Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Stephen B. Johnson, a seasoned electrical engineer whose career spans from military service in the United States, Marine Corps to roles in embedded systems, network automation and telecommunications. With a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University, Stephen has worked with industry leaders like Raytheon Emerson, electric and TDs telecom. His passion for automation and innovation is evident in both his professional projects and personal endeavors, such as developing a fully automated sprinkler system and enhancing home security systems. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me so this was kind of a fun story of how we met, I always talk a little bit about the wave, the wave dot engineer in our podcast, and Stephen has recently been contributing a lot of content on the wave. He's got some really cool posts about personal automation projects that he's worked on, and we'll talk a little bit about those today. And I found his content so interesting and intriguing that I asked if he'd be willing to be a guest on the podcast, and he graciously agreed to do so. So thank you for for being here again, Stephen. First question, same one I ask everyone, what made you decide to become an engineer? Okay,

Stephen B. Johnson: 1:58

so my path isn't as straightforward as most. My grew up in a very small town in Indiana. When I was about nine or 10 years old, my grandparents were visiting from California, and my grandfather just happened to be a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry, and I was doodling, like cars or pines or something, and he looked at me like, you should think about being an engineer. And I was like, Okay, I had no idea what that was at the time, because there was no such thing in my hometown. And then a few years later, somehow, I got hold of TI 99 for a computer, and I was teaching myself how to program. And they came back to town and I was showing him what I was doing, and he's like, You should be an electrical engineer. That is what planted the seed right there,

Aaron Moncur: 3:04

and what happened after that. I mean, did you start learning about what an electrical engineer is, and were you doing any of your own projects when you were younger, before you know, formal training, education, there was

Stephen B. Johnson: 3:16

not much. There were no resources around. I would pop in the Radio Shack occasionally to be in awe of what was there, right, right, but there was no buying a kit for anything that just didn't exist. Was

Aaron Moncur: 3:36

there something? Maybe it was even during college. But at what point did you know? Yes, I've made the right decision. Electrical Engineering is is the right path for me.

Stephen B. Johnson: 3:46

So after I had that point in my head, I was like, and I still continue to teach myself how to program. My mother, I would see her doing payroll week after week with this calculator. Had paper rolling out, so I took on the endeavor of writing a payroll program I was probably 13 years old.

Aaron Moncur: 4:08

Wow, that's no small endeavor, especially for a 13 year old.

Stephen B. Johnson: 4:13

Yes, in basic writing, it in basic as well.

Aaron Moncur: 4:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, given the tools that were available then, so

Stephen B. Johnson: 4:21

I was fairly naive, because I had no idea what the US tax structure was like. I was doomed. I was just too naive. And then my mother, there's just no way she was gonna break her habit of using that old calculator. Yeah,

Aaron Moncur: 4:41

yeah. Well, what do they say? Shoot for the stars land on the moon, right? Yeah.

Stephen B. Johnson: 4:47

So there really wasn't much else driving me toward electrical engineering, other than that, seeds been planted, and I kind of like writing programs and seeing. What I could do. And then the other obstacle I had to overcome was I had to figure out how I was going to get to college and pay for it, because my parents did not go to college. My father died when I was nine years old, and my mother's business was failing once in high school, so I kind of knew I had to figure it out. It's just not a problem to solve, right?

Aaron Moncur: 5:30

Yeah, that sounds like a difficult place to be, and what, what did you do? How did you figure it out?

Stephen B. Johnson: 5:37

Well, when I was 16 years old. I enlisted in the Marine Corps, and it I wasn't, I wasn't like, biggest person. I wasn't like, physically, I was small. But one of the things I spoke to the recruiter, and I was pretty determined. I was like, Okay, I could do this. And, you know, I get the GI Bill and and then the recruiter asked me, he's like, what would you want to do? I took the test, and he basically said, what, what do you want to do? I was like, I'd like to work on aircraft. And his face lit up because his background was working on helicopters. Oh, nice. Okay, so he kind of helped me, guide me into I won the airframes in Marine Corps. I worked on the F eighteens.

Aaron Moncur: 6:30

How cool. That must have been a dream.

Stephen B. Johnson: 6:34

I mean, that was really cool. I mean, yeah, the thing about a Marine Corps Squadron is, it's a they're very small. It's a small group of misfits, really. I mean, it's just crazy, and you didn't work on every aspect of the plane, even though I was airframes. I was out there helping them drop power plants, avionics, whatever, just because it's is a very cohesive group.

Aaron Moncur: 7:06

Now you say a group of misfits, and I know that you're saying that lovingly and affectionately talk. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that. What was the group like? I uh,

Stephen B. Johnson: 7:21

it, it, it's just a a group from all aspects, all areas, coming together, and you could just achieve so much. Um, one of our sayings was, we've done so little What? No, we've done so much with so little for so long, we can do practically anything with nothing.

Aaron Moncur: 7:47

I love that. What? What do you think it was about, either the culture or the environment or maybe the time? I don't know, just lack of bureaucracy in a good way. What was it that made your group so effective, so able to do so much with so little?

Stephen B. Johnson: 8:09

Well, we do. I mean, it's just everybody had this drive to and we knew we had to get things done. Like all the maintenance on aircraft occurs at night, so the plane to be ready in the morning, and nobody would leave the hanger until everybody was done. Wow. So, so that, you know, that was a motivation there, too. But yeah, yeah, even, even our pilots, our pilots were our officers in our squadron, and my first lieutenant, he was a very squared away individual, and the other pilots would kind of pick on him, but he actually went off to become a space shuttle pilot. So it's just, you know, you have to have a lot of drive and, yeah, just emanate all throughout the squadron, this very good environment,

Aaron Moncur: 9:04

group of really high performing individuals, yes, yeah, wow. Sounds like an amazing group to work with,

Stephen B. Johnson: 9:11

yeah. And we all had fun, too. I mean, so

Aaron Moncur: 9:15

you worked on some really cool things, right? Aircraft you just mentioned, I think missile and satellite systems for, for Raytheon, yes, some, some really cool stuff. What, what have been some of the most technically challenging projects, and how? This is a huge question, right? No way to answer with detail in, you know, 3040, minutes, but one or two of the most technically challenging problems, and how did you and your team go about solving those problems?

Stephen B. Johnson: 9:46

Well, at Raytheon, one of the primary projects I was on was the Patriot two missile, and specifically the automated test equipment for. Of the power supplies. So, I mean, that narrows the scope down a little bit. One of the challenges that we had to overcome was, and I didn't know this at first, I I'm fresh out of school, I show up there, I'm gung ho to you know, getting designs, and we're trying to pull together the requirements, really in doing so I learned that a sister division in Raytheon had the previous contract, so they sent me over to this other sister company, you know, naive, straight house, cool, thinking everybody's going to help me. I get there, and I find out that the Division I was with won the contract over this division, and they had all the drawings, the bill materials, everything, and they sent me into this place where I was like, I was trying to, you know, I could read the room, and I was like, this isn't I said that. I try to get whatever, whatever information I could and get back. And it was a that was a challenge. There

Aaron Moncur: 11:07

was it more like of an interpersonal challenge, like trying to figure out who was in charge of what and how to deal with the different personalities, whole total

Stephen B. Johnson: 11:16

personality, and it's like I encroach on their domain.

Aaron Moncur: 11:22

Oh, okay, so how did you deal with that? I mean, did you find a solution that worked? Well,

Stephen B. Johnson: 11:28

I got what information I could, and I went back and some of the project manager I was working for had had to step in and kind of help get spoiler information. And then from that point, I it was kind of like a sustaining engineering problem, because the designs were done like a decade prior, and I'm looking to build material, and I'm like, Okay, I need these devices, and 50% of our obsolete. So now like, okay, okay, are we going to redesign this power supplies? Well, the answer was no, that's not planned. I'm like, okay, the devices are obsolete. You can't buy them. Okay, so that was a challenge, yeah. And they were actually, like, looked at like, who fab some of these? I'm like, Oh, that'd be so expensive. So I was in the middle of that. Another thing that came up was for all these programmable devices, and there are 1000s of them, and they'd have to be programmed. They had to be a programmer. And I was working with the field application engineer from the program, little programmer, and up, she's like, Yeah, these are obviously the program. You know, the device can't program these. And I was working with her, trying to get the list of what you know, narrowed down. And then I hear that each device, they wanted to put the the program for the device on a floppy, a three inch, three and a half inch floppy drive each program. Now, there were 1000s of these. I was like, No way. I'm like, somebody sent me 1000 floppy drives. I'd be so upset. So CD riders were available then, just barely, but they were there. I'm like, we're gonna burn these on a CD. They're like, well, if they use lose the CDs. Little Bird, two, three, doesn't matter. Nice, yeah, yeah. So finally, I got people to buy into that. I was like, oh, there's a logistic nightmare we avoided, because that's all got that about the same time there I was also dealing with a satellite. Is it actually in orbit, and I got this engineering change order? I almost thought was a joke, because

Aaron Moncur: 14:02

it's already in orbit, what do you want me to change? Yes,

Stephen B. Johnson: 14:07

on your space suit. Yeah, they need, you need to review this injury change order. I'm like, it's an orbit. I'm like, if I approve it, is it they gonna change? No, I don't approve. It doesn't matter. I'm like, What's the point? So that kind of drove me a little bad either. But about the same time, I got contacted from surecon Corporation, here in Madison, Wisconsin, they were following up on my resume that I sent them from Purdue. And so I was like, Oh, I was in Boston with Raytheon, and Boston really wasn't my cup of tea. So I was like, Sure, con. I was like, I had never heard of them other than I said my resume, apparently. And I had. Had a friend from Purdue who was going to grad school at MIT. So I drove down there, and I was like, we went to the library, and I need to find the information on via me, computer boards, anything I can get, just so I can get prepped, because I find it massive for near view. And so I wasn't finding anything. I'm like, okay, here I am at MIT's library. I can't find anything on this. I'm like, one more fine site in the stuff that some books were and I found the book on microcontrollers. I think it's some Barnes and Noble somewhere. Now I opened up and I'm reading through it. The book actually referenced here, concordation.

Aaron Moncur: 15:46

Oh, no way, like it was meant to be.

Stephen B. Johnson: 15:50

I'm like, This is unbelievable, because free, you know, the Internet was so infant, then you were you couldn't find me then. And so here I have this book. I'm like, Okay, I'm reading about microcontrollers. Sureg on Corporation DME bus. So I flew in for the interview. I get the mass in Wisconsin, which I've never been here before. I get in, I go into interviews, and they give me exams, like hardware and software exams. And I went through my own like, okay, met everybody in the company. Is a really small company, probably the ad engineers total, and we have the vineyard fashion e in design in the same building. So interview went good, and they wouldn't need to be a support engineer. So I was like, okay, in everybody would be supportive. Just be like engineers from companies, engineers from Lockheed, Raytheon, gluson, Nortel, Sienna, just this Engineer To Engineer support. Basically, awesome. Okay, that's, that's pretty cool. I could deal with that. And so I went interviewed, went back. They made me an offer and go, I'll take that. I'll go back to the Midwest. So, so I showed up, history, became a support engineer. It for open systems, slash embedded systems with real time operating systems. How

Aaron Moncur: 17:25

have the tools changed over the years? I'm pretty familiar with how tools for mechanical engineers have changed, CAD and 3d printing things like that, but not familiar with how tools for electrical engineers, software engineers have changed over the years. I mean, you talked about basic right back when you were younger. What have been some of the monumental changes in tools that allow engineers like you to do your job

Stephen B. Johnson: 17:55

for embedded systems? Some of the boards we had frequencies were pretty decent. So you had to have scopes that had sampling rates that were substantial. And then you also had busses, so you had to be able to analyze a bus. So that was the only factor up there. Since we did the manufacturing of our boards, we also had functional test software that would be running on the boards, and we put into a burn in but we'd ramp up the heat, and that would really shake out any weak link in the designs, if you start seeing memory errors with temperature. Yeah, any

Aaron Moncur: 18:37

other tools that come to mind that you have now that you didn't have 30 years ago that are just game changers for what you do

Stephen B. Johnson: 18:45

today. I mean, we use a lot off servers at tbs. For me, I just have my little scope on my desk, which is perfect for me. Yeah, great. Yeah. It's not anything too sophisticated here? All

Aaron Moncur: 19:03

right, well, I'm going to take a short break here and share with the listeners that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Learn more at Team pipeline.us. The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers. Learn more at the wave. Dot engineer, not just learn more, but go check out some of Stephen's cool posts that he's done. They're really interesting stuff with some of his personal projects, and maybe let's get into some of that right now. So Stephen, you've posted a few things. There was an automated sprinkler system you had. You had a we'll just call it a middle of the night, night light. Right for for men, there was another one in there that is escaping me right now. But where does your inspiration come for some of these personal projects?

Stephen B. Johnson: 20:12

So as I mentioned, I was as a cure con Corporation and as a sport engineer, and I became a field application engineer, and one of the skills that I really seemed to be natural at was I could identify problems, concise problems that need solved. My personal projects just are essentially bad. We bought our house here 10 years ago, and the sprinkler controller was a little micro controller based thing, and we have 15 zones to make a change. You got to stain that there. Turn this little dial and push buttons and turn the dial push buttons.

Aaron Moncur: 20:57

I despise those things, just the worst designed product ever, and almost all of them are equally bad. Yes,

Stephen B. Johnson: 21:08

I think her so. And then I'd be driving home from work. I was actually in the office then. So I drive home and it may be raining out, I pull my driveway. I see Supreme Court, absolutely insane. So I decided to, I was like, I'm on. I'm just going to design a controller. I had no idea how it worked the current system. And then I so I had figured out was like, okay, at the time Raspberry Pi's were out, we have all this GPIO perfect. I can deal with this. I figured out that the sprinkler controller really just controls 24 volt AC going to solenoids out in the yard in these little placement valves. I was like, oh, so perfect. All I have to do is control this 24 volt AC using GPIO do a relay. But I don't want to touch this. I want this to be fully automated. So I started writing the code. I started writing in python three. Python three just been released. I was like, okay, I'd use Python shot seven before python three had some it's a bit different, not to but, you know, okay, force myself to use python three, and I created a zone class for each which create an object for each zone. It's like a track statistics, like, how long are they bringing in when it was going to run next, and then to determine when there's going to run. I was like, okay, what can I how can I get the weather? I was like, there's some airports nearby. I was like, okay, they have weather stations. So I could query National Weather Service. I can query airport, and I could say, okay, they're both in the team. One of them gets rain. One doesn't it, how much is it going rain? So I could make decisions based on that. And you also get how, you know, keep track of how long it's, how much rain there was. And I could control the zone run time. If it's been raining a lot, I just run its own five minutes each. If it's been dry for 1015, minutes each. So I was like, okay, that's that's pretty good. But then I was like, Okay, I want, can this city be more effective? So I don't want to see the spring close run. So I calculated the sunrise every day, and I backed off from the sunrise. So last week, we're finished at sunrise. Oh,

Aaron Moncur: 23:49

wow, that's great. I love it. And this is so indicative of how typical projects go. Right? You start with something basic, and then you start layering on complexity and sophistication, and so you end up with that perfect system, just what you want, yes,

Stephen B. Johnson: 24:07

and yeah. And I was able to test it through the winter using a very quick prototype. I bought some little related boards off of Amazon. They had eight relays, each wired all up each other, relays clicking I was like, okay, my simulation seemed pretty legit. Oh, and I mentioned I was tracking the weather. I had the software running, and I had it sending me the decisions it was making every more every morning. It's like, is it going to run? It's not going to run. Email on me. We went to London for a week with my family. Now I'm getting all these emails of like, it's not gonna run. It's been delayed. It's not running. Kind of find out we had a torrential rain in the area.

Aaron Moncur: 24:55

So it did what it was supposed to

Stephen B. Johnson: 24:57

do. It worked perfect. Case. Matter of fact, when we got back from London, we drove up, we couldn't even get to our house because the roads were flooded, wow. So I was like, I was like, Oh, my logic. That validated my logic in one of the most extreme Wow scenarios.

Aaron Moncur: 25:14

That's awesome. How satisfying that must have been.

Stephen B. Johnson: 25:17

Yes, that was, I impressed myself,

Aaron Moncur: 25:21

any any projects coming up that you're excited about working on

Stephen B. Johnson: 25:26

my security system. That was another thing was here in the house, when we bought it, all the sensors were here, and the prior owner had it, who was also a Purdue engineer, and I was gonna pay for the service. I was like, Oh, I'm not gonna pay for that. And so you have these little panels by the door, and you know, you have to push the buttons and arm it, disarm it, whatever. I'm like, I don't wanna do that either. So, so I used, I was like, I took down the controller they had, and I put up a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and the Wired, the wire, wired sensors to it, and then I have other Raspberry Pis throughout the house. I call them the panel. So like when the door opens, there'll be one beat when a door closes, two beeps. And if I have a LCD connected to it. They'll tell you the date and time and what door open, the close. Oh, cool. Okay, so I, I'll mention I had three teenagers at the time as well. So that was very

Aaron Moncur: 26:35

Yes, yes, I understand completely. Then

Stephen B. Johnson: 26:39

we had the wired sensor, or wireless sensors through the house too. I was like, Oh, how do you how am I going to see these wireless sensors? And again, I had no idea how they worked, so I got a software defined radio, which basically plugs into your USB, not plugged into a Raspberry Pi, and a little bit of C code. Somebody was gracious enough to have a library on GitHub called the RTL 422, compiled it. It just runs and it reads that software defined radio, and when it sees a message, it will output as JSON. I was like, Oh, perfect. So as it sees messages outputs, I would capture that JSON with my Python code. And now I took the lot I could do, all the logic. So the logic I have systems armed all the time. When doors open and close after a certain time, well, between certain window, at night in the morning, if a door opens, it sends me a push notification to my phone. I can also arm it to where it would always send me a push notification.

Aaron Moncur: 27:50

That's so funny. See, you have effectively circumvented the subscription model that this security company has, and just use their hardware with your own homegrown system.

Stephen B. Johnson: 28:02

That's correct. Yes,

Aaron Moncur: 28:04

that's awesome.

Stephen B. Johnson: 28:06

It's been running now for nine years. Wow, amazing.

Aaron Moncur: 28:11

You have, you have complete control over it. You can, you know, complete make whatever you wanted to do.

Stephen B. Johnson: 28:16

As a matter of fact, I just extended it about a week ago, we have woodpeckers. They like to make holes in one's corner of our house, primarily. So I was like, and when I'm sitting here in the basement, I can't hear them very well, and they could be going nuts out there. So I got a piezo mic. What

Aaron Moncur: 28:42

I think I see where this is going. Ran it

Stephen B. Johnson: 28:45

through Arduino analog digital converter, and then I had to figure out, how can I detect the pecking sound without getting the ambient noise, which I figured out, if I put the again, if I put it flush with a surface of like the window, it will pick up those vibrations. But my wife vacuumed the bedroom. What's in it did not trigger that. So I'm like, That is perfect, yeah, so and I tied that into my security system. So if a woodpecker attacking and detects it, they'll learn and they'll beat my security system five, five beats.

Aaron Moncur: 29:30

And is that enough to scare the wood woodpeckers away? Or do you have to, like,

Stephen B. Johnson: 29:34

go out there? No, I have to go out there and, okay, chase them off. So

Aaron Moncur: 29:39

now we know what the next addition to your system is, right? Some kind of loudspeaker right in that area that blares at them and scares them away so you don't have to go outside.

Stephen B. Johnson: 29:50

Yeah, yeah, that would be great. But if anybody's ever dealt with woodpeckers, they're, they're the most honorary. I. Bird that you go out there and try scare. They'll stay on the wall, stay on the side of the house, and they'll just look at you. It's like, it's like they taught you, it's Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 30:11

What are you gonna do? But that's it, yeah. So as you were talking about this, a question came to mind. You know all these different programming languages, right? You talked about JSON and C and Python, different versions of Python, Python. I know nothing about software or programming, so this is maybe an obvious answer to anyone who has even a little bit of experience with with software. How do you know which language to use for which projects,

Stephen B. Johnson: 30:45

if you need something that's really fast by C is a good go to language. It's been around for a long time. It's you have to be a little careful, because it will allow you to do things which are exactly desirable, and you can crash your program. C plus, plus if, if you need something with more object oriented type thing,

Aaron Moncur: 31:19

that's a good option. What would be an example of an object oriented thing where

Stephen B. Johnson: 31:24

you could create a class, like, for example, I created a class for my zones for my sprinkle controller. So each zone, I created one class, and I created 15 objects using the same

Aaron Moncur: 31:38

Okay. Okay.

Stephen B. Johnson: 31:41

So c plus, plus big adoption there. But really today, Python is, it's a Swiss Army knife of programming.

Aaron Moncur: 31:53

Is that your go to these days? Yes,

Stephen B. Johnson: 31:57

it's very nice. Of course, you'll find people with different opinions all over the place, but sure, um, yeah, but another thing that I find is the Python community is very cordial. I don't know how else to explain it, but some some programming languages out there, you ask a question in certain form, and you step back and just wait to be

Aaron Moncur: 32:24

berated. Yes,

Stephen B. Johnson: 32:27

Python community is not like that at all interesting. It's a very I mean, this is an interesting psychological phenomena that, yeah, somebody in psychology should really look at, because it is, I think it's just a side effect of the language being so nice,

Aaron Moncur: 32:48

interesting, that is very interesting. Wow. All right, well, you've done obviously, you have a plethora of technical experience and knowledge and understanding you you've also taken on some leadership roles in your career. What? What? What is some advice that you would give to younger engineers who want to kind of step into leadership roles. So

Stephen B. Johnson: 33:13

there's really two areas of leadership, right? There's technical leadership, and then there's a management that in either one lead by example, I'm not going to ask somebody to do something that if I wouldn't be willing to do it myself, or at least help do it if they need it. For the technical leadership, keep an eye on new technologies. Try out new things. I'm always trying something new. I have a server over here. I'll fly over a virtual machine try something out, just to see, is this useful? Is it not even the Python stuff I did for my personal projects carried over to my work, things I learned, you're always, I mean, you can always learn, put yourself out there, learn and in the leadership roles just kind of rolling in.

Aaron Moncur: 34:03

That was something else I was going to ask you about. I've heard about a few of your personal projects. I'm sure there are many more that that you've done. So it seems to me like you spend a fair amount of time doing personal projects that are engineering related. How To what degree has that helped your career? I really

Stephen B. Johnson: 34:28

do my personal projects to keep me more ingrained with my electronics engineering feelers. Sometimes at work, you start encroaching on the it you skip the atmosphere at the IT realm, and sometimes I bet I need to get pulled back into that engineering domain. So, yeah, that that's why I like I will never get pulled into the IT side. That's just not me. I I'm an engineer, first and foremost, and I. It may encompass, there is a serious overlap in a lot of areas.

Aaron Moncur: 35:06

What is one thing that you have done to accelerate the speed of engineering? So

Stephen B. Johnson: 35:12

let me relate this to a project a few years ago I got, got pulled into a cable TV platform. It was a it's pretty much a mess, and didn't need somebody who knew video and servers and could write some code to try to automate some things. So that's a pretty good fit for me. When I first got pulled in there, they gave me their master spreadsheet, which was like, Oh no, there's no way this could be accurate, because there were just too many moving parts. There's just no human that could keep this accurate. So I started collecting data from the equipment, and we started pulling into a database, and we started mapping the content flows. And then once I collected all this data, some people on other adjacent teams are like, Oh, you have accurate data, they would ask me for it. And I was like, Okay, I will send this to you whatever frequency you want, because I'm pulling this automatically and I'm sending it to them so they always have accurate data. So not working from something that's totally irrelevant, and that alone has sped things up so much, and the number of man hours saved, I don't know how to calculate, it's just huge.

Aaron Moncur: 36:37

So you took a process that was being tracked manually in a spreadsheet, presumably not very well, because there were so many moving parts associated with it, and you basically you automated it. You started pulling data from the different pieces of equipment, feeding it into some central repository, doing an analysis, spitting out results. And that was kind of the process here,

Stephen B. Johnson: 37:03

yes. And then one of my colleagues, which I worked with for many years, did the front end. So we expose a web page for whoever wanted to use the staff. Yes, it just there's so I this morning, I got the email. They sent the email to our product management so they have all the fresh lineups. What you know so completely accurate.

Aaron Moncur: 37:27

I bet everyone loves that. What? What do you think the reason was they hadn't done that before?

Stephen B. Johnson: 37:34

I don't think there's all familiar with programming and and being able to reverse engineer how, how to get this data from this equipment. Because I call these my little minions go out there and get this data. There's a lot of reverse engineering hell. I definitely, I look at these gooeys, and I was like, how's this going getting the data? And I'd figured out, okay, I can get this data, but I'm getting it like, 20 times faster. Nice, so, so it just worked out great, wow.

Aaron Moncur: 38:05

Just didn't have the right skill sets before you came along, I guess, yes, and

Stephen B. Johnson: 38:12

I mean, it's also not always an accurate data. It's kind of like all mech documentation, which, again, documentation is something. It's the last thought in anybody's mind ever. But it's so crucial to have you know good documentation. This here, this web page, it shows you the channels you click on it. It shows you the flow where the content sourcing from. It could be source of Utah and going to New Mexico. Could be sources from Madison, Wisconsin, going to Colorado. I mean,

Aaron Moncur: 38:48

that's perfect, because most engineers I know don't love doing documentation. But as you mentioned, it's really important. You need to have it. There's a an engineer that I worked with a long time ago who used to say that the output of engineering is documentation. I thought that was a great, great catch phrase, yeah. All right. Well, Stephen, thank you so much for being on the show today. This has been delightful hearing your stories and experiences. I think there, there's going to be a lot that people take from this before we sign off here, I wanted to try something a little bit different, recommended by a friend of mine. I'm going to read one of the we get messages from listeners every, every now and then, and I'd love to hear more from our listeners. Frankly, we don't hear from listeners as much as I'd like, and I'd love to promote some more interaction with between we here, who produce the podcast and those of you wonderful listeners out there who consume it. So this one is from Nicolette fornellis For Nellis. I hope I pronounced that last name right. And Nicolette says I recently came across your. Podcast, and wanted to thank you for sharing Industry Insights from various perspectives. I recently graduated with a master's in bioengineering, and felt a bit lost about how I would fit into the professional world. Your Podcast truly opened my eyes to how impactful engineering can be. I would love to connect with you and learn more. Thanks again for the inspiration. Thank you so much, Nicolette for the wonderful, wonderful, heartwarming message, and of course, to all of the guests like Stephen and all the others that have been so generous in sharing their time and contributing to this, this body of knowledge here on the podcast. So if you're listening to this and you have something to say. Maybe you'd like to suggest a guest. Maybe you have recommendations for different things to try, topics you'd like to hear about. Please send us a message. You can find me on LinkedIn and just message me directly on there. You can also find me on the wave. Dot engineer, send me a message there, and we would just absolutely love to hear from you. So with that, I guess we'll sign off now, Stephen, how can, how can people connect with you?

Stephen B. Johnson: 41:12

LinkedIn is a perfect way to find me. Stephen , DJ e

Aaron Moncur: 41:18

perfect, and we'll include a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes here. All right. Well, Stephen, thank you again, so much for being on the show. Really, really appreciate it.

Stephen B. Johnson: 41:28

Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate it and I enjoy your podcast.

Aaron Moncur: 41:33

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online. Visit the wave dot engineer, thank you for listening.