Engineering Education with Dr Don Wilcher

Welcome, Dr Don Wilcher! He joins us right as he’s about to release a new book, M5 Stack Electronic Blueprints

• He worked at Willow Run early in his career (facility now closed)
• Henry Ford Community College
• Larry Sears
• Having joy in the courses
• The Knack
• John Davis joined on a previous episode to talk about Industrial machines
• What is a PLC?
• Relay ladder logic
• Industrial Computer vs Controller
• Scan loop on a PLC
• XIC / XIO
• A Distributed Control System (DCS) networks many controllers together
• Don taught a blueprint reading class
• Chris asked about why connectors are drawn the way they are
• Later in his career, Don moved from the industrial space to design in cars
• Wiring harness
• Body controller module
• CAFE laws - California Air Fuel Economy
• 68hc11
• Wetting current for switches
• CAN
• Cigarette lighters in cars
• Don was working on the (Jeep) Grand Cherokee
• Decoding CAN with a scope
• Packard electric connectors
• Cars have a "shower curtain" for water in the door
• Don got his PhD and switched to education
• He taugh courses like
  • Electric Circuits 1 / 2
  • Intro to robotics
  • Automated system and diagnosis
  • Electronics Industrial Maintenance
• Instructors putting bugs into the system to test students
• PLCs still reign supreme
• Arduino recently released the Opta, which is targeted at the industrial market
• Don writes for Control.com
• OpenPLC is software that can run on a variety of accessible platforms (like ESP32/Arduino/etc)
• Industrial I/O
• OpenPLC based on IEC spec (61131-3)
• Different programming styles of programming
• Blackhat (movie) with Chris Hemsworth
• Stuxnet worm
• He wrote and article about using OpenPLC with Arduino
• Dr Don has a new book that was just released! The M5 stack book
• Continuing Education Courses
• IEEE certificate
• Dr Don will be speaking at the Embedded Online conference coming up in April