Available for contract work · San Diego, CA
Embedded systems, from schematic to shipped firmware.
I'm James Daugherty. For more than thirty years I've written ARM firmware, laid out boards, and built the control systems behind turbine generators, vehicles, flight simulators and earthquake sensor networks. When a job also needs video — a festival DCP, a three-day conference AV rig — that's mine too.
Ch1 CAN 500 kbit/s
Ch2 ADC 12-bit
Time 200 µs/div
Trig armed
ARM Cortex 32-bit
FreeRTOS & bare metal
CAN · RS-485 · SPI · I²C
Altium 21+ · KiCad 6+
Yocto embedded Linux
C / C++ · Python · Swift
What I get called in for
Seven lines of work. Most engagements run under six months, and my standard contract is confidential, so the detail below is deliberately about capability rather than client names.
Embedded
Firmware for 32-bit ARM
Bare-metal and FreeRTOS firmware on ST Micro, NXP, Infineon and generic Cortex parts. Interrupt-driven designs for cases where timing is the requirement, not an afterthought.
Hardware
Schematic and board design
Altium 21+ and KiCad 6+ through fabrication and bring-up. A 64-button control board I designed for a helicopter flight simulator replaced a $3,000 Xilinx module and drew 20 mA.
Buses
Protocol and interface work
I²C, I²S, CAN, RS-422, RS-485, UART, SPI, ADC, DAC and PWM. Bluetooth 4.1 plus the iOS or Xamarin app when the device needs a phone at the other end.
Linux
Embedded Linux systems
Yocto builds, embedded Linux video and display systems, and drivers and installers when the device has to meet Windows and macOS on the desk.
Video
Production and cinema delivery
DCP mastering for theatrical projection, and live AV direction — four consecutive years running the audio-visual team at San Diego Comic-Fest with no technical failures.
Systems
Integration, debug and test
Logic analyzers, mixed-signal scopes, in-circuit emulation. This is usually why people call: the system half-works and nobody can say why.
Litigation
Expert witness testimony
Testifying expert in software and electronics disputes. My video frame analysis of a yellow-light interval — 3 seconds against a 4-second standard — overturned a run of red light camera citations in court.
Recent work
Film festival delivery, convention AV, and a Comic-Con panel on Jack Kirby's architecture. Full project notes
Who I've built for
Consulting under the JIMD Group name since 1999, plus staff engineering roles before that. Where a contract allows it, here is the record.
Read the full resume
| Organization | Domain | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Sony | Optical storage | Project manager for six CD-R, CD-ROM, DVD, DAT and magneto-optical models. Ran FCC/CE, shock and vibration testing, and built the software compatibility lab other departments adopted. |
| JVC · ATIS Assmann | Broadcast | Software engineering across Japanese, German and US teams. |
| Caltech · Stanford | Seismic sensing | Quake Catcher Network earthquake sensor system: Windows and Macintosh drivers and installers. |
| Price Club, now Costco | Retail imaging | Head of software development for the ID-card capture and print system, including serial strobe control timed to a single video field. Deployed chain-wide. |
| US Department of Defense | Defense | Contract engineering under confidential terms. |
| Capstone Turbine, via Delta Positive Slope | Power generation | iOS and Modbus control system for 35 kW turbine generators: remote start/stop and fault logging. |
| Platinum Simulators | Simulation | Button and quadrature-encoder control boards for a $90,000 helicopter flight simulator. |
| San Diego County | GIS & elections | Precinct mapping database and reporting across 1.4 million registered voter records. |
| Johns Hopkins University | Medical research | Wearable inertial measurement unit that captured and quantified Parkinson's disease tremor data for FDA drug trials. |
Tell me what isn't working.
Send the problem, the deadline and whatever documentation exists. I'll tell you straight whether I'm the right person for it.