About

I earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Platteville. My career started in motion control systems working for Giddings & Lewis, where I designed and installed control software for the G&L family of programmable motion controllers for companies in the U.S. and Europe. I went on to work independently in this field for over 10 years. Highlights from my motion control systems career include:

• Recognized by OEM customers as persistent and dedicated with proven ability to learn quickly and work very effectively with client engineering staff.
• Extensive experience developing motion control applications for the G&L's PiC900 family of Motion Controllers in diverse sectors, including food packaging, product handling, machine tools, and paper converting.
• Interfacing with analog and digital servo systems, human machine interfaces (HMIs), frequency drives, serial or ethernet HMIs, remote and distributed I/O, machine sensors, and plant supervisory communications systems including AB Data Highway, Modbus, Arcnet, and Ethernet.

I am currently focusing my efforts on embedded product design. I have been developing products for clients and working on my own product development efforts. Some recent projects include:

• Developed Remote Observation Station charge controller using Motorola's 68HC908Q family MCU. Design became grand-prize winner in Motorla's Flash Innovation 2003 design contest.
• Developed prototype for customer's patented portable electronic data collection device targeted at sport and tournament fishing.
• Designed a CompactFlash / IDE Interface card for the Apple II family of computers. Have sold hundreds of units to retro-computing customers in 14 countries.
• Currently prototyping a new GPS tracking device with long-term data storage capabilities.

I am familiar with many development tools and platforms:

• C/C++ and Assembly programming on Intel x86 systems and Motorola 8/16 bit MCUs
• PiCPro Ladder/Servo development system for large, multi-axis motion control system applications
• MS-DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux, PC BIOS, Win32/MFC APIs
• Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, IBM's CSet++
• Metorwerk's CodeWarrior C/C++ and Assembler
• Altera MAX+PLUS II EDA software
• Protel DXP Design Explorer
• SoftIce PC Software Debugger
• Various logic analyzers and digital oscilloscopes

Contact Information
Richard Dreher
5102 Blazing Star Street
Wausau, WI 54401
Email rich@dreher.net