Skooks Pong - EEWeb

Skooks Pong 

Senior VP of Technology 

Synapse 

Electrical Engineering Community 

EEweb.com

EEWeb PULSE TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Skooks Pong 

SENIOR VP OF TECHNOLOGY AT SYNAPSE 

A conversation about the company behind Nike’s FuelBand, SportWatch GPS, and many more. 

Featured Products 

Rail by Viableware: A Fraud-Free Tableside 

Payment System 

How Viableware, a WA-based startup, turned to Synapse to help develop a tableside payment 

system at restaurants to prevent customers from giving their credit cards to complete strangers. 

Pericom: Dealing with the Stress of 

High-Speed Signal Layout 

How this rising semiconductor company’s unique devices and support help customers overcome 

key signal integrity issues. 

Designing a Binary Clock 

BY ROB RIEMEN WITH EEWEB 

How to design a binary clock using the Basic Stamp Homework Board microntroller with an attached 

breadboard. 

RTZ - Return to Zero Comic 

Visit www.eeweb.com 

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3

EEWeb PULSE INTERVIEW 

Synapse is a multidisciplinary 

engineering firm based in Seattle, 

Washington. They combine mechanical, electrical, and 

software engineering with unique design teams to help the world’s 

leading companies fully realize—from idea to reality—new technology devices. We 

spoke with Skooks Pong, the Senior Vice President of Technology, about the company’s 

innovative approach to product development, its broad range of clients, and the 

company’s truly unique work environment. 

4 EEWeb | Electrical Engineering Community 


5


How did you get 

into engineering? 

I have a pretty unconventional background. 

My dad was always trying 

to do his own thing and was very 

entrepreneurial. I worked with him 

quite a bit on his various projects, 

so I remember learning how to use 

a micrometer and a lathe when I was 

around 8 years old. 

While in high school in the early 80s, 

my dad started a company that developed 

a small lightweight aircraft 

engine, so I started working with him 

pretty much full-time. I had a number 

of different interests, especially mechanical 

projects, so I got into motorcycle 

racing and started raising 

money to build some of my own stuff. 

Eventually, I wound up in the bicycle 

business, running my own shop for 

a few years, as well as working with 

Cannondale. 

During that time, I met one of the 

founders of Synapse. As time went 

on, I was less interested in running 

my own shop and managing all the 

other things that go into owning a 

“We’re okay with 

not being the designers—we’reengineers 

and we’re 

proud to be engineers, 

so we like 

solving hard engineering 

problems. 

business. A couple engineers that 

I met through Cannondale moved 

out west and started working for a 

design firm here in Seattle. With their 

encouragement I jumped into the consulting 

arena and I’ve been doing it 

ever since. 

How would you describe the 

team at Synapse? 

Synapse is a multidisciplinary engineering 

firm. We combine mechanical, 

electrical, software engineering, 

project management, and manufacturing 

support to build collaborative 

teams helping some of the world’s 

leading companies fully realize— 

from idea to reality—new technology, 

devices, and experiences. There are 

a little over 250 employees here. We 

are based in Seattle, Washington, and 

also have offices in San Fransisco, 

California, and Hong KongWith small 

design firms, a lot of time is spent innovating 

on the front end of product 

development and dabbling a bit with 

industrial design, as well as supporting 

products after they launch. We’re 

okay with not being the designers— 

we’re engineers and we’re proud to 

be engineers, so we like solving hard 

engineering problems. The more the 

project involves the full range of our 

capabilities, the more 

we like it. With engineering 

at the core 

of those capabilities, 

I think it really helps 

create a strong focus 

for our business. 

Synapse has been 

around for 10 years. 

When the company 

was originally founded, 

we just wanted to 

work with our friends 

on really interesting 

and challenging 

projects. Over the 

last decade, we’ve 

evolved to better address our clients’ 

strategic needs. Companies are wanting 

to introduce ambitious devices as 

consumers demand more and more 

innovative products. As our clients 

respond to these transformations, we 

expanded our services to include full 

end-to-end consultation capabilities 

in order to guide them through a successful 

development process. 

What type of clients 

does Synapse have? 

We work on a variety of things. 

When we first started, we did a lot 

of lab automation for companies like 

CombiMatrix, Ekos, and others in 

Synapster (sin•âp•ster) 

n. A person or animal which works for 

Synapse Product Development. 

Ex. I’m so jealous of those synapsters; they have 

the best jobs ever. 

Source: The Urban Dictionary 



7


Synapse 

boasts a unique 

work environment 

geared towards 

employee satisfaction. 

the area. We helped CombiMatrix go 

from optically detecting and reading 

micro-rays to doing it electrically—in 

order to create a smaller and cheaper 

device. From an electrical engineering 

perspective, we worked closely 

with them to develop ways of measuring 

and detecting very small currents. 

Those were interesting projects. Now 

we have a client base that spans a 

wide range of industries and we’ve 

built a large team capable of managing 

and helping in the creation of 

entire lines of products for companies 

such as Nike. 

With Nike, our engagement has been 

in the development of wearable fitness 

devices. We started working with 

them around 2006, shortly after they 

launched their Digital Sport division. 

Some of the earliest projects were the 

AMP+ watch and then the SportBand. 

Over the past 7 years we have gone 

on to work on the SportWatch GPS, 

countless other prototypes and ideation 

studies, and most recently the 

Nike + FuelBand. 

What is the scale of the 

projects you typically 

work on? 

We do everything from small-scale 

proof-of-concept projects to full 

concept to market development for 

new products and experiences. We 

want to make sure that our business 

is successful and the way do that is 

by making sure our people are successful 

at what they do. That’s the 

company’s top priority. 

How do your teams 

work together? 

There’s a very open and collaborative 

feel in this office. For each project—depending 

on the client and 

project—we build specific teams to 

help meet the set of requirements 

given to us from the client. From this 

“The few of us who got 

the company started 

all came from different 

design firms. Our goal 

was to create the best 

place we ever worked.” 

list, we can see which MEs and EEs 

will be good for the project (depending 

on their expertise) and see what 

they can leverage from their own experience. 

From there, we bring them 

together move into the brainstorming 

part of it, which is really a crucial 

part of the process. It’s not as rigid 

as it sounds—it’s actually a lot of fun, 

especially collaborating with people 

from different disciplines. There’s 

a lot of emphasis on brainstorming 

and there are essentially no bad 

ideas—even the craziest ideas that 

might seem impossible can end up 

leading us to other solutions. We have 

a lot of interns here as well, and if an 

intern has a great idea, we’ll use it. We 

try to be egoless and collaborative. If 

we have a few failures, we can only 

learn from them. 

What do employees like about 

working at Synapse? 

The few of us who got the company 

started all came from different design 

firms. Our goal was to create the best 

place we ever worked. That is essentially 

the DNA of the company—to 

really drive to make it the best place to 

work for our employees. We do want 

to make sure that we turn a profit, 

but it’s not necessarily the number 

one priority. The goal is to create an 

environment that makes it exciting 

for people to come to work and collaborate 

to solve hard engineering 

problems and support our clients’ 

product goals. 

We provide an all-hands catered 

lunch every Wednesday, and we have 

a snack kitchen, and people can bring 

their dogs to work, so it’s a pretty fun 

place. Plus we encourage people to 

organize company events, which is a 

really great to build community and 

let employees dictate the culture. 

In talking about Synapse as a company, 

we always look for ways to support 

the various community outreach 

projects people are involved in. For 

example, we support people who are 

doing job shadowing for high school 

students and college students. Also, 

we had our 10-year anniversary last 

year and to celebrate we decided that 

it would be good to give something 

back to the community. So we gave 

a $20,000 grant to IGNITE, which 

is a Seattle-based group a couple 

of our engineers are involved with. 

IGNITE is dedicated to encouraging 

girls to pursue education and careers 

in engineering, science, and technology 

or STEM education. That sort of 

outreach is one of the things that we 

continue to build upon. ■ 



9

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“Jade:” Fujitsu’s First SoC Graphics Controller 

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11



Automotive SoCs for CPU and Graphics 

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and the big.LITTLE processing technique in an automotive SoC. For more 

information, please click here. 

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The ASSR-1611 Solid State Relay (SSR) from Avago is specifically 

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optically coupled to a high-voltage output detector circuit. The detector 

consists of a high-speed photovoltaic diode array and driver circuitry to 

switch on/off two discrete high voltage MOSFETs. The relay turns on 

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Integrated AFE for Pulse Oximeters 

The AFE4490 is a fully-integrated analog front-end (AFE) that is ideally 

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To ease clocking requirements and provide a low-jitter clock to the 

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13

EEWeb PULSE PROJECT 

Restaurants are subject to an incredible 

amount of credit card fraud—over 60-percent 

of data breaches happen in the hospitality 

industry, costing consumers billions each 

year. However, restaurant “skimming”— 

when servers illegally copy your credit card information—is 

a very easy scam to pull off. We willingly hand 

over our credit cards to complete strangers who walk 

away—oftentimes completely out of sight—before returning 

the card several minutes later. 

In 2010, Viableware, a Kirkland, WA-based startup, conceptualized 

a solution to this costly problem, a tableside 

ordering and payment system called Rail. To develop 

the system—an integration of hardware and software—it 

turned to Synapse, a Seattle-based engineering firm 

specializing in product realization. 

According to Ziv Magoz, electrical engineer for Synapse, 

Viableware had several requirements for the device. 

It had to communicate wirelessly with restaurant POS 

systems, have RFID and NFC capabilities, and a touchscreen 

durable enough to accept signatures without 

scratching the surface. 

Another important requirement was that the device had 

to be waterproof, meaning it could have no plug-ins for 

charging. To address this, Synapse developed an induc- 

Percent of Americans who have been 

victims of credit card fraud 

Percent of Americans who have been 

victims of debit or ATM card fraud 

Median amount reported on credit 

card fraud 

Percent of all financial fraud related to 

credit cards 

Total amount of credit card 

fraud worldwide 

tive charging station. Functioning like a transformer, the 

primary coil is in the transformer and the secondary coil 

in the Rail. When the Rail is placed into a slot on the 

charger, the distance is short enough to have roughly 

70-percent efficiency between the two inductors, driving 

5 watts of power into the Rail. Fully charged, the 

4.2 amp/hour battery in the Rail has enough power to 

last 16 hours. 

With security being the paramount concern, Synapse 

incorporated a card reader with a magnetic stripe that 

encrypts the credit card number before sending it wirelessly 

to the server. The decryption then occurs on the 

credit card company’s side of the transaction, making 

the information secure throughout the entire transaction 

process. 

Viableware is currently piloting the device in PF Chang’s 

and has plans to also expand into New Orleans-based 

Dickie Bennan restaurants. More recently, the company 

announced that it had integrated its technology with leading 

restaurant POS systems, MICROS, NCR Aloha and 

Dinerware, which serve over 60-percent of the 400,000 

full-service restaurants in the US. 

For more projects from Synapse, please visit: 

www.synapse.com 



10% 

7% 

$399 

40% 

$5.55 

Billion 

Source: Consumer Sentinel Network, U.S. Department of Justice 

Date Verified: 7.23.2012 

15

EEWeb PULSE SPECIAL FEATURE 



17

EEWeb PULSE SPECIAL FEATURE 

Customer Service 

One of the biggest differentiations in Pericom’s 

business model is its emphasis on customer service. 

In talking about his role at the company, Joseph 

Juan stated, “I frequently visit customers with 

our regional sales team to reiterate how Pericom offers 

a lot of diverse product lines to help them solve 

various integrity issues.” The hands-on approach 

that Pericom takes with its customers provides insight 

into why their customers come back for more. 

Paired with their comprehensive design resources 

and online support, Pericom’s solutions make it 

easy for designers to meet their 

design requirements. Among the 

various design resources are application 

notes, design guidelines, 

and simulation models that 

you can run before you start the 

PCB layout. “The customer can 

provide us with all of their design 

requirements,” Juan told us, 

“From there, we can take connectors, 

PCB layers, board materials 

and parametric and plug 

them into the simulation models.” 

After developing the simulation 

The hands-on approach 

that Pericom 

takes with 

its customers 

provides insight 

into why their 

customers come 

back for more. 

models, the team can run a SPICE simulation that 

can show the customer where to place the repeater 

products to get the optimal effect. The combination 

of these services enables customers to design more 

effectively and efficiently, which cuts the time from 

design to market. 

Signal Conditioning and the 

Pericom Solution 

Pericom has a variety of products to deal with the 

signal conditioning of products covering high-speed 

serial interfaces. As these interfaces migrate from 

parallel to serial high-speed interfaces and the speed 

goes above 5GB per second, the 

problems with signal attenuation 

and insertion loss arise, which 

causes the system to have integrity 

issues. That’s where Pericom 

comes in. In order to overcome 

some of the more difficult layout 

issues, the application team at 

Pericom uses a variety of tools. 

“The tools we use in our lab consist 

of pattern generators or highspeed 

signal analyzers,” Juan 

told us. “This is done in order to 

re-produce a data pattern across 

Actual Size of Pericom’s USB3.0 PIEQX501 ReDriver 

the high-speed signal.” Juan also mentioned how the 

team uses a high-speed scope that runs “upwards 

of 20GB in order to measure all of these slopes and 

rise/fall times.” 

These requirements are reflected in Pericom’s 

products. For signal conditioning products, Pericom 

has a very-well defined USB3 ReDriver (repeater) 

product that 

has allowed them to 

Pericom’s team 

attends the complianceworkshop 

regularly 

to ensure that 

their products 

are fully compatibile 

with 

other devices. 

successfully break 

into the notebook 

and server markets. 

Apart from the USB3 

ReDrivers is a line 

of PCIe ReDrivers, 

which is something 

the company has 

been seeing a lot of 

demand to ensure 

the desired SI level. 

“Pericom makes the 

effort to make sure 

that all of the IC con- 

troller products meet the compliancy testing,” Juan 

told us. “We attend the compliance workshop on a 

regular basis, which allows us to offer fully tested 

and compatible devices that can be attached to other 

host controllers.” 

In hearing about the many ways that the Pericom 

team shows commitment to creating a unique and 

easy experience for the customer, it’s evident that the 

Pericom solution is a pairing of quality devices and 

superlative customer service. While this approach 

should be a prerequisite business model for any 

semiconductor company, based on Pericom’s fastgrowing 

sales and stature, it seems to be the key to 

their success. ■ 



19

Making Wireless 

Truly Wireless: 

Need For Universal 

Wireless Power 

Solution 

Dave Baarman 

Director Of 

Advanced Technologies 

"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis 

iste natus error sit voluptatem 

accusantium doloremque 

laudantium, totam rem aperiam, 

eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore 

veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae 

dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam 

voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit 

aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos 

qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro 

quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, 

adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut 

labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad 

minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit 

laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem 

vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil 

ARTICLES 

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COMMUNITY 

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EEWeb PULSE TECH ARTICLE 

Binary Clock 

Design 

Rob Riemen 

Rieman 

Computer Engineering Student 

The University Of Cincinnati 

The Basic Stamp Homework Board (BSHWB) microcontroller, 

the PIC16C57, is a surprisingly useful 

and somewhat powerful microcontroller. I decided 

to use this to design a binary clock, along with an 

attached breadboard and available I/O pins, which 

make development of a project such as a binary 

clock much easier. 



23

EEWeb PULSE TECH ARTICLE 

DESIGN 

I designed the binary clock based on the graphic below: 

The above graphic shows how a binary clock should 

be positioned to function correctly. I used six LEDs 

to represent the hours of the clock. Seven LEDs will 

represent the minutes of the clock. Finally, I used seven 

more LEDs to represent the seconds of the clock. 

With a total of twenty LED’s to represent a full 24 hour 

clock, however, this isn’t the only way this particular 

binary clock can be setup. I initially thought that the 

LEDs cycled from the top eight to the left bottom one, 

in a sort of carry effect, but each row stands for its own 

number of time, as in a single row cannot exceed 15 

from binary converted to decimal. In relation to the 

binary clock, a single row cannot exceed 9. 

There are limitations that come with the BSHWB. There 

are only 16 I/O pins available for use. There are 20 LEDs 

that are needed for a full clock as shown above. For 

this specific design, I wanted to limit the parts that are 

used, in order to reduce clutter, and cost. Unfortunately, 

functionality is also decreased with fewer parts. 

The above clock could be created using only 16 pins, but 

a couple different integrated circuits (ICs) would have 

to be used. The simplest way would be to use 14 pins for 

the minutes and seconds sections of the clock. The rest 

would have to be interfaced through at minimum four, 

four-output demultiplexers. These IC’s require three 

inputs and only give you one extra output. Obviously, 

I didn’t want to clutter the limited breadboard space I 

had with 4 ICs. So, for this project, the I eliminated the 

seconds, as shown below. 

Now only 13 I/O pins were used, under the assumption 

that most clocks do not have the seconds displayed. 

Most binary clocks do include the seconds section, but 

with these seven LEDs removed, three extra I/O pins 

were now available for added components. 

In order to make this design a little more original, I wanted 

to add the functionality of switching the clock over to a 

12 hour mode. Usually, binary clocks feature only a 24 

hour display mode. To do this, I needed a pushbutton 

switch, as well as an extra LED. The pushbutton would 

allow the user to switch between 12 hour mode and 24 

hour mode. The extra LED would notify the user when 

the clock is in A.M. (off) mode and P.M. (on) mode. The 

list of parts are detailed below: 

• BASIC Stamp HomeWork Board 

• 9V Battery 

• 14 LEDs (7 Yellow, 6 Green, 1 Red) 

• 14 – 470 Ω resistors 

• 1 – 220 Ω resistor 

• 1 – 10 kΩ resistor 

• 1 – pushbutton 

• At least 1 extra breadboard 

• Sufficient amount of wires 

For this project I decided to use 470 Ω resistors between 

the I/O pins and the LEDs. This is not the only way to set 

this project up, but I felt that 470 Ω is the right amount 

to get the desired brightness out of each LED. Another 

commonly used resistor that would work just as well is 

the 1 kΩ resistor, but with the 1 kΩ resistor the LEDs 

would be slightly more dim. 

PROGRAM FLOW 

Fortunately, with the use of the BSHWB, coding for 

circuits is simple. The BASIC Stamp Editor codes in 

PBASIC, which is a simple and educational coding 

language. It allows for the declaration of variables and 

includes IF-ELSE statements and FOR Loops. 

I coded this project as simply as possible. I tried to limit 

variables and only used the HIGH/LOW command to 

turn the LED’s on and off. There are more efficient ways 

to structure and design this code, but because I was 

working on a budget, I tried to make the design of the 

code similar to the design of the circuit. 

Using one continuous loop simulating a non-stop 24hour 

cycle, a combination of IF-ELSE statements, and 

one FOR Loop is used. The FOR Loop’s arguments 

only apply to the variable used by the first row of the 

minutes section, but all of the IF checks for the correct 

time are made in both the infinite loop and the FOR 

Loop. Nothing special went into efficiently keeping 

track of the illuminated LEDs. I used four counters 

for each row of LEDs. Each counter had a series of IF 

statements associated with it in order to make sure the 

correct LEDs were illuminated. The counters updated 

at the end of each series of IF statements. Each LED 

was then commanded to go High or Low depending on 

what period of time it represented. 

I set up my program to start from time zero every time. 

This is not the way a clock should be setup. You are 

rarely going to be starting this clock at midnight every 

time you replace the battery. If you would like to add 

functionality to this binary clock, increase the number 

of available pins with a few demultiplexers and use 

a potentiometer and an extra pushbutton to help with 

setting the time. 

FINAL DESIGN 

Although there are some limitations with the BSHWB, 

the potential for a full scale binary clock is available. 

Actually there are ways to develop a binary clock 

only using Flip-Flops and Gates. There are also other 

microcontroller based circuit boards with more I/O pins 

that can make development much easier. My particular 

setup is shown below: 



25

Flight Plight: CES Series Part 6 

Frequency Disturbance 

Super RTZ

Skooks Pong - EEWeb

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