Portfolio

2022 - Present: Austin Motor Company

For the past two years I have been lead R&D design engineer at the historic Austin Motor Company as we've rebooted it into a retro-modern electric vehicle manufacturer. Our first product - 'Arrow' - is an authentic 1930's Brooklands inspired lightweight open wheeler which takes many cues from Austin's competition vehicles of the era, with a twist of cutting-edge technology and modern production methods and materials.

Aside from working with our fluid body designer and production team and helping pull all of our collective ideas into a product suitable for production, I've helped with developing vehicle components in CAD for various design candidates and our eventual production vehicle, setting up a complete toolchain around our ABB robot to translate some of those components into physical molds for our composite manufacturing team to create body assemblies from, setting up a CG render environment, formulating colour and trim palettes, vehicle specifications and optional extras packs, plus developing all of the tech going into the car - from driver facing stuff like analogue and digital instrument panels to 'Type 2' charging interfaces, vehicle body control logic and power management.

As a small company making a very niche product, a lot of what we've needed hasn't been available off the shelf so we've had to create a lot of elements of the vehicle ourselves from scratch, which has been a bit hectic but a very fun challenge.

2015 - 2022: University of Essex

I studied Bachelor's and Master's level Electronic Engineering at Essex. Those seven years spawned a lot of very diverse project work - not just from my degree, but also from what became my day job as a tech developer with the university's in-house AV team, plus from the various academic research projects I was involved in. Here's some of what I created during those years:

Oyster Research Project (2016-2018)

European oyster conservation research project. More detail here.

Study Pod Connectivity Hub (2018)

AV connectivity hub for student study spaces. More detail here.

Graduation Status Display (2022)

Status display units to help tech teams synchronize during large events such as graduation and also provide some corporate signage. RS485 Modbus linked over spare structured CAT 6.

Listen Again Beacon (2020)

RGB light beacon for visual indication of sound or video recording during lectures. I handled physical design and hand assembly of over 150 of these devices.

Microphone Sound Interface (2016)

USB audio pre-amplifier and CODEC with driverless install on Windows, intended as a 'one box' replacement for the audio mixer and bundle of cables used at the time, but also better matched to the microphones used in teaching spaces with better audio quality and lower noise. More detail here.

Older and Hobby Stuff

Briarsfield Audio Designs (2013 -present)

Briarsfield is a brand I've used for a lot of design ideas and have built a few of from time to time. More information here.

HNC Project (2015)

Design proposals for an ATE (Automated Test) system from my HNC project, designed to test contact patch stability of components such as relays and switches, but expandable to other uses. Influenced by a stint as test engineer at a specialist electronics company.

Specialist Component Tester (2013)

A piece of lab test kit I designed and built during the same stint as test engineer. Core functions were reverse engineered from a device the company had built years before but which no plans existed for. Period logic used to ensure similar characteristics.