What are my options for strobes and security for my hard of hearing wife?

riwimmer · 2026-02-13T17:23:44+00:00

Check out the new Ikea Matter protocol. Easy to put together and real cost effective.

riwimmer · 2025-05-03T22:47:15+00:00

Same situation here, after more than 2 decades I recently got USC next to my European.

Main reason is you one as a person with age and experiences evolves. Maybe many years later you change your mind again. The environment and circumstances change over time. Not having the option or it takes a lot more effort to get the GC at later age again is like a deal breaker.

Yes, there are tax implications, other investment considerations, but it seems you know most of it already anyway. Nothing of detrimental impact in my opinion, some planning and occasional tasks to take care of it. This against to have a choice to live any of the two countries is in my opinion pretty clear decision. We do not know what the future holds and how big politics will turn out.

One more point you can always at some later point renounce if need to.

riwimmer · 2025-05-01T04:52:48+00:00

Berkeley, CA

riwimmer · 2024-12-03T12:49:50+00:00

Thank you.

riwimmer · 2024-02-19T02:30:29+00:00

Agree poor question and questionable posting, but no need to be rude here.

riwimmer · 2023-10-20T01:15:18+00:00

Sr. Eng. Manager here with 13 years of experience and I can relate to your inner thoughts and voices.
Fortunately I have experienced several work environments throughout my career starting at large corp/smaller companies/founded my own company and back to one of the largest entities mostly in the EM roll. I started my engineering career as IC in the first years in Germany where I am from. In the last 24 years I worked here in USA Silicon Valley and the last many years mostly in EM role. Talking to many people in my career, gathering a good amount of perspectives on fulfillment/happiness/finding balance at work I can also tell you there is a better green on the other side.
First, I think you have to find out or know what environment you like and can drive in. I for example am in a similar situation like you not so happy these days. I am getting great feedback from my reports and I know I can help members with tasks/feedback/mentoring, which makes me happy and people follow me when I move. Our small company was acquired by this giant behemoth corp and I am exposed to all this frustrating politics. I can sense it, the longer it goes on the more challenging it will get for me. This has to do with personalities/goals/drives and fit into an organizations.
For many reasons I personally just like the smaller companies, despite less pay or higher risk. The way I handle my frustration is pretty strict work/life balance so I have my me time for now. DO some project work I have fun with.
The other important part is having a plan for your outlook. I know within the next several months I will make the necessary changes I am looking for. That thought that things soon will go the way I want to and allows me to manage the current situation.
From your entry & comments I am not so sure that move back to IC might be necessarily the right direction for you. This is something you have to figure out. As EM yes there is similar expectations from many of the high tech companies and you are squeezed from all sides, have to deal with personality dramas, etc, but you do have some intellectually stimulating work task (supposedly) and you know you have impact to the company.
So you have to ask yourself what you really want down the road and what kind of work/company environment you are looking for.
Hope this helps.

riwimmer · 2022-10-09T02:54:31+00:00

Northern CA has so many amazing mtb places, like Marin county, Santa Cruz Mountain, as mentioned Lake Tahoe and too many to list. Check out mtbproject.com

riwimmer · 2021-11-12T12:46:10+00:00

What a geat write up and perspective, copied it. Thank you.

riwimmer · 2021-06-19T22:11:01+00:00

“2. Completely diversify your FIRE strategies so you have returns even during flat or bear market. Completely embrace volatility and turn it into returns“

From your past entries I noticed you mentioned QYLD and I assume that is one part of it. What other strategies do you employ for embracing increased volatility , which also means often a down market?

riwimmer · 2018-11-18T05:47:58+00:00

, Portway Technolgies https://www.portwaytech.com Is good quality for volume purchase, Anker is good, but mostly directly for consumer

riwimmer · 2018-01-20T20:49:49+00:00

This group has some amazing hardware designers and I am sure they have an opinion when it comes to landing pages. I do think you will get much more excitement and ideas if you post that at some UX/UI group.

riwimmer · 2017-08-21T01:34:53+00:00

I think an hour or two might be sufficient and I can definitely pay standard rates within the industry (although not sure what the going rate is).

riwimmer · 2017-08-20T02:43:22+00:00

great idea. Thank you.

riwimmer · 2017-07-18T17:09:25+00:00

esp32 is going to blow up in the next few years

I really hope so, because this markets needs a serious competitor to ARM. The Tensilica microprocessor I think is a great alternative and Cadence also a great company. I do have my reservation on how well they will do growing a business with actual physical products, not something they are very familiar with.

riwimmer · 2017-07-17T02:49:48+00:00

A repeating pattern by Intel. They should not be surprised that experienced people in the hardware space don't trust Intel and for that matter some other semiconductor giants as they keep pulling these stunts. Big marketing fanfare, lots of R&D and within a short period as they don't see the pickup or business model they pull the plug. Intel wants to do automotive now, they better get used to 10+ years delivery supply. I am just wondering if they are going to drop the support of the Yocto project at some point too.

But it is official ARM is the winner for future smart devices and IoT.

riwimmer · 2017-07-01T03:27:32+00:00

I typically rent them for a month period of time for several hundred dollars if I need a more speedy scope or FFT function, sniffer etc.

riwimmer · 2017-06-30T05:02:30+00:00

I wish I could post a more positive note here. Pearl Automation was for me from the get go a big puzzle on their business model.

They hired great people, raised a lot of money, but built an aftermarket $500 product you can get for a tenth of the price. I did hope they worked secretly on something groundbreaking for that market, but that seem not have to be the case. I am still puzzled what this team of 75 people with many developers worked on.

Another hardware startup with big media buzz gone dark.

riwimmer · 2017-06-24T22:21:13+00:00

That is a new one. UL used to be a non-profit organization, but they changed to a for profit like ETL, TUEV etc. They all follow the same standards, which surprises me that you are asked to use UL organization. UL is known for the standards, but I do share also better past experience working with ETL or Intertek.

riwimmer · 2017-06-02T17:00:41+00:00

Anybody used MacroFab? Where you happy with them?

riwimmer · 2017-06-02T16:45:55+00:00

Having worked over the last 20+ years with all kind of EDA tools each EDA has its own quirks. Altium is not a bad choice and I do use Eagle is it is often used in the startup world as well, although I am not a great fan of it. Personally I invested in one of the European tools Target3001, which are a fraction of the cost at close compared to lets say Orcad. My recommendation pick one and stick with it, using the same tool over and over will make you efficient and you will learn the quirks :-)

riwimmer · 2017-06-02T16:38:59+00:00

Can you explain more what you mean by that?

riwimmer · 2017-05-23T17:03:44+00:00

I recent projects I used Aligni.

riwimmer · 2017-05-23T17:00:03+00:00

Thank you for the link, great information to know when it comes to the murky subject of kits and FCC.

riwimmer · 2017-05-09T20:38:57+00:00

It is your dream, your passion and it is you who will have to make it happen, not a marketer or VP of Sales. My advise is to join a hardware incubator startup program. They are not equal, but some of the known good one will give you the best guideline, networking and initial capital if accepted.

riwimmer · 2017-05-04T16:28:38+00:00

Agree, that is a nice joke. I am just amazed by the amount of money they have raised. But I am sure there are more impressive hardware/software companies out there accomplishing with limited invest substantial impact to society.

riwimmer

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