Tea with Wesly Lo

Met up with Wesly Lo of ABI Electronics for afternoon tea during his business trip here. It was eight years since he came over to my workplace to give training on two testers which we ordered from him. Good time catching up. He even brought my book along to get my personal signature. ;)

Quadcopter RE

Completed the chapter on X-Ray PCB-RE about two weeks ago, and now beginning with the chapter on quadcopter RE.  Progress is a bit slow as the Chinese Lunar New Year is just two weeks away and there's a lot of preparation to be done including the annual spring cleaning.

Here's a two-page sample:

While there are four categories of drone types, I will focus on the more popular and widely deployed, the quadcopter. Of course, there are many articles and write-ups on this drone model but I hope to cover more grounds in a systematic way of analyzing its design and parts.

The DJI developed models, in particularly the Mavic Air, is of interest to me. I may not be able to post its schematic diagrams even if I reverse engineer it as there are legal implications if I do. However, a detail inspection into its components should be no issue since there are teardown videos on various drones online.

To be sure, a good understanding of how a commercial drone is put together certainly helps any drone enthusiast appreciate his or her kite better and who knows, it might come in handy for troubleshooting and repair when a fault develops.

Anyway, it's too early to know how the chapter will go. Hopefully, it will be worth my time to write and for my readers to read.

A Shred of Sliver Lining

Continuing from my previous post on the setbacks encountered during the writing of my trilogy book, just when things seem dark and despondent despite my best effort to keep on working, I received an email out of the blue from the president of Elgris Tecnologies, Inc., Igor Luvishis.

He wrote:

First of all, let me thank you for the work you do writing about PCB reverse engineering. As our company is working in this field for many years, I really appreciate your effort.

We got both of your books with the PCB-RE Tools and Techniques book arriving just few days ago. This second book is devoted to the PCB-RE tools available on the market.

It's a pity that Elgris Technologies and our tool (E-studio For Test) are not mentioned in the latest book. 'E-studio For Test' is one of the major tools used by customers for schematic generation from netlists for boards that are being reverse-engineered. 

We will be glad to work with you and to help/participate in any possible way by writing, providing material, sponsoring a section or chapter devoted to Elgris Technologies tools.

We would also be happy to discuss other potential business arrangements with you.

I look forward to your response.

It's definitely a game changer with this surprise voluntary contributor knocking on my door. I see a shred of silver lining breaking through the dark clouds, and that's a good thing indeed!

Setbacks and Crawlbacks

If being a self-publish author is hard enough, imagine trying to orchestrate several contributors for an engineering book!

In the second half of last year, I invited five PCB-RE engineers to contribute a chapter each for my trilogy book. Along the way, one dropped off after showing initial enthusiasm; then another delayed replying my emails and I found out later that his dad passed away and he was having a hard time coping with work. Then near Christmas, the one whom I had such high hope dropped a bomber and pulled out after telling me he's just landed on a new job.

Such frustrations and disappointments are real and can sometimes throw the progress of a book off course or even terminate it prematurely. But I'm not one to give up easily, so in the midst of these setbacks, I have worked doubly hard and come up with two additional chapters to compensate for the loss. The chapter on X-Ray PCB-RE using an Arduino UNO is near completion. Here's a two-page sample:

I foresee the release of the trilogy book will be delayed till early February or perhaps March. Readers of my first two books will have to wait a bit longer, but I'm sure it will be worth the while...