Curious about how and why somoene would build hardware and share the designs and source code of that hardware? Want to get started with designing your own hardware? Wondering about how hardware developers and companies that build and share their hardware designs remain viable?

In this episode, Ashwin shares details of how he got started with embedded device development and how he built and released multiple devices as Free/Open Source Hardware.

Ashwin Whitchurch specialises in embedded system design and development with a specific focus on embedded medical devices. He is the founder of ProtoCentral where they build and provide embedded products, devices and components to developers and users. Ashwin is also the developer of the HealthyPi and HeartyPatch boards which are available for order on Crowd Supply.

Transcript

[00:00:00]
[Abhas] Welcome, Ashwin. So we are trying to do a series of audio recordings with some of the delegates here at the conference to learn about their work, and their motivation, why they chose to do the things they do, and how software freedom is a part of their work.

[Ashwin]

Okay. Okay.

[00:00:16]
[Abhas] So, to start with, I would like you to define what you do as a person? What’s your work? How do you define your work?

[Ashwin]

Okay. So our work right now I would say it is developing open source medical devices. By open source medical devices, I mean the hardware. We make open source hardware, and for that, of course, we use open source software as the firmware, as the GUI and so a lot of other applications. Unfortunately, we have not been using KiCAD yet, but we are going to start. We have just started using KiCAD and we are just learning about that. So, it’s not just that. I mean, we have been using open source hardware for a lot of different projects. So some projects are possible only because of open source hardware. Otherwise, we don’t get access to all these high end tools being a small company. And so open source hardware and open source software together has allowed us to reach into especially the world of medical devices. It’s a very closed community.

[00:01:40]
[Abhas] So to again personalize the question a little bit more, how did you get involved in this line? So you were talking about what you do as a company. Personally, what has been your journey like?

[Ashwin]

Yeah. So, interestingly, I was just talking to Christopher I think about the same thing, and the first project that really got me into open source hardware is a project called OpenEEG. This was in 2002 when I was a student and I did not have access to, I mean, we wanted to do some research with the EEG, but we did not have access to any kind of tools. And I mean, even our Internet access was limited. So we started with OpenEEG and that’s the first board that I made, first PCB that I etched by myself and that really opened up everything that I do today, like I used to be a — my basic degree is in software engineering, but I left that long time back. I am fully into hardware now, and I think OpenEEG was the main part of starting that. So during that OpenEEG I used [was designed by] Christopher, and it’s nice to meet him in the same conference here.

[00:03:24]
[Abhas] So why do you do what you do? I mean, you work with open medical devices. You work with medical devices fundamentally.

[Ashwin]

Yeah.

[00:03:32]
[Abhas] Openness is a facet.

Ashwin
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:34]
[Abhas] So why do you do this?

[Ashwin]

So I work on medical devices for several reasons. One is that medical devices and the physiological measurements are a very interesting thing. My first introduction to the medical devices or physiological measurements was with EEG. When in college I was really fascinated with EEG maybe because it was because of my own personal thing. I have epilepsy myself. So for that I have gone for EEG ratings and stuff. And at that point, I wanted to know what epilepsy was. I mean, because most people don’t know. They just think it’s something, and then I went into details, found out. Then I started researching on epilepsy, and my first research project was on a topic called Absence Epilepsy, and that got published. It was a published work, and that was after — that is why I started using OpenEEG. And so from there onwards, my entire thing changed. I am not a software engineer. I still write code, but I went on to do a degree in microelectronics. I do not pursue this thing, but a degree in microelectronics with a concentration on biomedical instruments. So that was quite a transition for me, but it’s been the best. I think, that’s the best thing that happened.

[00:05:28]
[Abhas] So has the education helped you or are you largely self-taught?

[Ashwin]

Mostly, I would say self-taught, because my education, basic education here in India was on software engineering, and if I’m being honest and you can edit it out later, I don’t think it helped it all because it was mostly theory and if you ask me any software engineering practices or methodologies, I don’t know.

[00:05:58]
[Abhas] No, but you mentioned something, your degree in microelectronics.

[Ashwin]

My basic — yeah, yeah. No, my basic bachelor’s degree was in software engineering. But I do not remember anything that I learnt in the software engineering because that was just not my game I guess. Algorithms are interesting, but the way in which it was taught was not interesting. So I really didn’t catch on. I would say that I learnt algorithms from the basic algorithms after college by myself, which was the best way to learn. And that’s the final two years of college was when I got interested in JEE and stuff, and then I just [indiscernible 00:06:40].

[00:06:41]
[Abhas] So you’ve been designing medical devices for a very long time. I remember you told me that you’ve done it for some of the defence organizations in Bangalore.

[Ashwin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:49]
[Abhas ] So tell us something about that journey? So you built it for these companies, and then you started to build these as open source hardware.

[Ashwin]
Yeah. Actually, one more point if I may mention when you ask me about why have you stepped in to medical devices, now when I was in college, I knew I wanted to work with EEG with epilepsy, but if I go to a doctor, doctor may think I’m crazy because they say you are a software engineer. I mean, how will you even do this kind of thing? And then when I approached the biology department, they thought I was even more crazy, and they didn’t allow access to any of the equipment out there. So I thought the best thing to do would be build my own. So that is what made me choose OpenEEG project. So as for your next–

[00:07:45]
[Abhas] I was talking — so, how did you start building these devices?

[Ashwin]
So we started, I mean, my basic research in graduate school during my MS was in medical system, patient monitoring systems. We tried it with the animal models and human models, and the part of it was in nanotechnology, which is actually quite boring, the exams. So, immediately after finishing my MS, I came back to Bangalore, and I didn’t wanted to work anywhere I guess. So I started this company, and our first customer was the defense for the DRDO, and we started out by developing a soldier health monitoring systems for the DRDO using a, I mean, at that time it was new body area networks and all that was new, and VLE was new at that time. So we made some devices for that. And then we made a lot of other projects, and right now we have completed at least like 7 to 8 projects in different areas. So during the course of this project, we had to do a lot of research to get these devices to work. And we spent a lot of time figuring out how to get these used to work, and medical devices as they are, they are not properly documented or anything, because of the very nature of highly IP, the dependence on IP. So we learnt these things like how to measure in EEG, and what is the best way to do low-noise amplifiers and all that, and these are — this is common knowledge. I mean, this is not proprietary to the projects that we’ve worked out. So that’s when we decided okay, let’s take these parts whatever we made, and whatever we can open source, we will open source, and see what somebody else brings with them. And as an experiment, we just started with one or two boards for that. I remember the first board...

Episode 4: Ashwin Whitchurch