MacroFab Engineering Podcast #210
Valentina Toll Villagra and Kyle Dumont with Allspice.io
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February 5, 2020, Episode #210
- Experienced electronics designer having launched consumer products at large companies and startups for over 7 years
- Has developed low volume products for government and military applications and high volume commercial products
- Project Manager exploring the intersection of physical and digital systems at Allspice
- Worked at Amazon expanding its national customer fulfillment network and rolling out internal productivity, collaboration and project management software applications to support the company’s growth
- Rundown of the platform
- Where did the name come from
- How did it begin?
- The word “Agile” gets thrown around a lot.
- Mechanical engineers have 3D printing and Software developers have great design and test tools.
- What are your roles?
- Kyle – Development, strategy
- Valentina – Operations, customer success, marketing, product
- How big is the team?
- How does Allspice affect the engineer? The manager?
- Diff control? How is this implemented?
- Launch and the future?
- When does it launch?
- Are there plans to expand the offerings to other EDA tools?
- What is next?
About the Hosts
Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!