Welcome to my little, cosy, corner of the web
... oh yes, and the name 'Csele' is pronounced 'Chelly' or 'Chell-eh'1

Who Am I? ...

I am a full-time professor at a small college in Niagara, Canada, teaching photonics (laser engineering), thin-film technology, and embedded systems design using PIC (and dsPIC) microcontrollers in the department of Technology. I have authored a book on lasers as well as an article in the Kirk-Othmer Chemical Encyclopaedia. But since this is a personal web page I thought I'd share a little about myself first from my photo album of personal faves (with photos chosen randomly - some are quite dated though) ....


In front of Ben and Jerry's in Vermont in 2009. While in Vermont we visited the factory, with highlights including sampling the product and the graveyard of flavours - gems like 'Holy Cannoli' containing ricotta cheese and pistachios that never sold well on the shelves and were, themselves, shelved (perhaps you can see why).

What's New On My Pages ....

OK, Let's try Chronologically ....

Born in the late 60's, I grew up in the 1970's at a time when lunar missions were just ending, we still got home delivery of milk from Sunnyside Dairy via a horse-drawn cart, the vacuum tube was still king (but solid state was coming of age quickly), and my parents were one of the first ones on the block with a colour TV. (No kidding about the horse-drawn cart, I remember our neighbour running out to the street with a shovel after the horse had passed to gather ... errr ... fertilizer for his roses :). The TV brought us images of space missions and of the war in Vietnam, and people seemed preoccupied during this 'cold war' period that nuclear war between the superpowers was imminent. TV, too, seemed preoccupied with the whole 'cold war' theme and spy shows like Mission:Impossible (a show I just _couldn't_ miss) were all the rage!

Dad owned a shoe store, Ernie's Shoes, on Main street and my brother and I spent a good deal of time there in the back while Mom and Dad tended the store. On weekends, we'd make trips to Preston, Galt, and Kitchener to the shoe factories there to pick-up custom orders. On the way home, we'd tuck ourselved into 'cubby holes' made between the boxes in the back (these wee the days long before seat belts were mandatory). And on the way home, we'd often get a special treat, a hot hamburger from the Knotty Pine or Gulliver's Travels! On weekends we weren't "on business", we'd go on day trips to places like Burgoyne woods in St. Catharines.

As for me, I did OK in school, and developed an interest in both science and engineering at an early age - starting with basic electricity and electronics, and migrating to digital electronics and computers. During school (beginning in grade seven) and throughout high school I entered science fairs and this was the primary vehicle which drove my interest in science. My science fair experiences reached an apex when I won first place in Physics at the 35th International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in Columbus, Ohio. My Science and Lasers Page contains many personal refections and memoirs including my experiences at the Niagara Regional Science and Engineering Fair (NRSEF) and International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) which shaped my interests.

... and then Real-Lifetm kicked-in ...

After high school I avoided reality ... errr ... pursued academic excellence at the University of Waterloo and McMaster University for seven years earning a degree in honours physics (from the University of Waterloo) and later computer engineering (from McMaster University) ... I did mention that I was never sure whether I should be a physicist or an engineer didn't I? During my time as a student I had the usual summer jobs (like programming a custom POS system for a photo shop on a DEC Rainbow computer running dBASE-2). I went on to do more database programming and installing Novell networks which later spun into a business which helped put me through school.

Upon graduation (can't be a professional student forever, I guess), I went to work for the control systems group at CP Rail developing train control systems, primarily a client-server based OCS (Occupancy Control System) running under OS/2. I became the 'comms' guy of the group specializing in communications systems (including RPCs). Long before that, though, I had a fascination with trains and specifically control and signalling systems, so this position was right up my alley!

I am a licensed Professional Engineer (P. Eng.) in the province of Ontario and a while back I 'moonlighted' as an engineer with VanDenTech Engineering specializing in embedded-systems solutions for industrial motor and power control applications such as large motors (up to 30,000 hp) and control systems such as PID controls.

... and then I came to Niagara College ...

In 1994, long before the photonics programs were even conceived, I came to the college as a professor of computer engineering technology teaching, primarily, hardware design (REAL hardware, like address and data busses, I/O chips, and all that jazz). I have utilized many microprocessors in past projects including the 6502, Z80 (my old fave), Z8 (another old fave - I like Zilog I guess), and 68K. Nowadays I pretty-much exclusively develop systems using PIC (RISC) processors including the PIC18F452 and the dsPIC30F series of processors - both used in courses I teach. The new dsPIC processors are particularly exciting since they offer a 16-bit core coupled with a DSP processor featuring 40-bit accumulators. In many ways, the processor seems to have all of the best features of many of my favourite processors from the past including a register bank (W registers) resembling those of a PDP-11. On the software side I do the usual low-level assembly-language programming (80x86) to support various interfaces (including USB) as well as C/C++ programming to support PC-based front-ends. In the past I have done C programming to support O/S functions such as pre-emptive multitasking and inter-process communications - mostly under OS/2.

I began teaching in the fall of 1994 and was coordinator from the fall of 1994 until the spring of 2005. Originally coordinator of the computer engineering technology program as well as first-year coordinator, during my tenure I initiated the computer engineering technician program and from there I was coordinator of the computer engineering technician and technology programs. While I was originally hired to teach into the Computer engineering technology program, with the start of the Photonics program I have now migrated towards teaching laser technology and my current teaching load is now primarily in the photonics programs, both technician/technology and advanced-lasers certificate programs (and previously in the Bachelor of Applied Technology degree program).

A physicist first, an engineer second, before I became an engineer I had a keen interest in physics. To me the most fascinating areas of physics include quantum mechanics and atomic phenomena (e.g., atomic emission, spectroscopy). Since I was quite young I have had an interest in lasers and have built many types over the years including nitrogen and both laser- and flashlamp-pumped dye lasers. See my Homebuilt Lasers Site and Science and Lasers Page for details.

I am a member of the IEEE Computer and Laser & Electro-Optics Societies as well as a member of the Optical Society of America. I am still 'split' between physics and computers.

Fundamentals of Light and Lasers I am the author of a book entitled 'Fundamentals of Light Sources and Lasers' published by John Wiley & Sons (ISBN 0-471-47660-9). Focussing primarily on lasers, the text introduces background concepts necessary to understand lasers including the nature of light itself, blackbody radiation and atomic emission, as well as basic quantum mechanics. Lasers are covered in detail with practical, real-world examples found throughout. The last six chapters of the text outline various laser systems in detail including visible, UV, and IR gas lasers, semiconductor lasers, solid-state lasers, and tunable dye lasers.

I have also written an article on lasers for the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology also by Wiley. It appears in the online edition.

Teaching:

My specialties at the college are lasers (specifically the mechanism of the laser itself), vacuum and thin-film deposition technologies, and embedded systems design (using microcontrollers and DSP chips). I am fortunate that our college features some of the most amazing labs anywhere including a dedicated class-4 laser lab (housing various YAG, CO2, and Argon lasers); a spectroscopy lab with several high-vacuum systems; an SEM; and a class-1000 cleanroom with thermal, eBeam, and sputtering deposition systems. Take a look at our SOP page showing many pieces of equipment we have.

Vacuum Deposition at Niagara College Some of my favourite courses are PHTN1432 and CTEC1630, two long-running courses which have been with me since soon after I had started teaching at the college. Today, PHTN1432 continues to be taught into our photonics programs and is constantly updated to include new techniques and equipment (the photo to the right shows an actual lab in the cleanroom - the yellow hue is not an flaw of the photo, the entire room is under yellow light to avoid exposing resist used in fabricating silicon chips in the same lab). Recent improvements in the course include the use of design software to model thin-film devices prior to fabrication in the lab and the use of all three major deposition technologies (thermal, eBeam, and sputtering). This course is the essence of college education: the application of theory to real-world problems and structures. It is a course for which I still feel personally responsible and is still "my baby".

Courses I Currently Teach:

Here is a brief description of courses I currently teach (or have taught in the past year). All feature an intensive laboratory component:

As well as the current courses above, I have taught a whole bunch of other courses4 ranging from electronics to general education courses (happens when you teach for over fifteen years)

After The Term Is Done ... the fun begins

During the fall and winter terms (naturally) I teach (and really, it's not bad getting paid to talk about stuff you find interesting anyway). During July and August (sometimes referred-to, usually by teachers, as the best two reasons for teaching), we camp as a family and hang-out in the backyard. I also do projects during this time: last year it was rebuilding our trailer (it was brand-new, but still neede extensive retrofits to get it just the way we wanted), and this year's major project is tiling the main bathroom and building a new oak cabinet complete with raised-panel rail-and-stile doors. The doors, drawers, and cabinet will all be built from scratch (no, it's not my first project :).

So that leaves May and June at the college, right after the Winter term ends. My favourite activity (which I never got to do enough-of when I was coordinator and so particularly enjoy now) is building and updating labs. Now 'building' a lab would be easy if one had all the money in the world: design a lab, purchase the equipment, and away we go .... but academia these days is far from perfect and often times the only way I would be able to afford the equipment is to rebuild old, donated, equipment. This is not to malign the college: most colleges simply don't have the equipment that we have nor do they have the facilities .... the only reason we can afford this stuff at ALL is due to a curious and strange phenomenon at Niagara College in particular in which several of us (I mean faculty and support staff) bring in donations of otherwise prohibitively expensive equipment and rebuild it for use in the labs. Some of the best (and most unique) equipment we own was either built in-house or rebuilt and our laser lab, as well as our microelectronics lab, is full of equipment like this.

Apollo 22HD laser The spring of 2009 is the story of a laser built in 1969, yes, 1969! This particular laser, an Apollo 22HD, is an amazing unit and can do things no other laser can do, like output two 20ns wide pulses of laser light a fixed interval of time (say, 100 microseconds) apart. Its principle use is holography, for example to study the motion of shockwaves, but an ulterior use for me is to demonstrate storage of excited ion populations in an upper laser level and allow students to develop a mathematical model for this laser in an advanced laser theory course. There are few lasers like this in the world and purchasing a new one would be essentially impossible (or at least impossibly expensive ... I wonder what my boss would say if I asked for $250K for a single student lab ??).

Apollo 22HD laser - dead lamp Well, the laser was dead when we got it in a few years ago. A quick check of the unit revealed dead, flooded flashlamps like you see in this photo (the glass bits around are a good indication there was a problem :). No big deal, except that these custom-built helical lamps are 15cm long, over 5cm in diameter, and run at around 10kV! A good bit of retrofit was required to make the laser work again including some electronics work on the trigger supplies (tracking-down dead SCRs), mechanical work on the lamp housings, and replacement of essentially the entire water cooling system. Having done that the laser worked ... for a while. One day in May 2009, while prototyping a double-pulse experiment for a new fall lab, something happened - a bit like a scene from a Wile E. Coyote cartoon - and an loud 'bang' occurred which lifted the safety cover off the laser and blew the O-rings straight out of the front of the laser pouring water everywhere (and we all know water gets along well with high voltage :). Hmmmm. Dave, our tech, went through the system carefully - scratch one amplifier lamp and one reflector but the electronics survived (kinda). On post-mortem it appears the lamp failed, filled with water, and the 6000 Joule capacitor bank fired through that water creating a massive shock which cracked the ceramic reflector and blew every seal in the amplifier housing.

A few weeks later we're running again and then ... nothing. Electronics failure.

Apollo 22HD laser At this point the problem becomes a puzzle for yours truly. Based on the dates on the blueprints (yes, real blueprints), the laser was designed in 1969. It uses a logic family I've never seen, something called "HNL" logic (predating TTL, and looking a lot like DTL) which does not have the same levels nor characteristics as TTL. Low-side drivers are implemented with PNP transistors (something I was taught never to do), and the drawings are just plain cryptic. I spread the main drawing on my front-room floor (it is over six feet long). That drawing just identified the wiring between many modules, each with it's own set of drawings. Well, a few hours progress while staring at the drawings. I'm trying to trace how the logic board works but I can't find lousy "terminal #2" on the schematic. My daughter and wife, taking pity, look over the diagram and ten minutes later the elusive terminal magically appears. Hurray. And so the puzzle continues until I finally think I have a handle on how it should work (like "push this button, this signal goes to ground, the output of this gate goes high, and this transistor turns OFF, not on, since it's a PNP and wired essentially upside-down"). With the mental gymnastics, and a self-taught lesson in historical electronics, complete, the next day it's off to the lab to see what it _really_ looks like!

Apollo 22HD laser circuitry The power supply has six control modules, each on a 44-pin card, and literally hundreds of wires connecting these. I am sooooo thankful I am not colour blind at this point since wires seem to weave in and out from bundles everywhere. A few hours later and I now have an idea of what is _not_ the problem, but now I'm more confused than ever as to how the safety system works. Another few hours to stare at schematics.

What _were_ they thinking in 1969? Maybe I need to fire-up that old colour-organ and stare at it a while to get into the right frame of mind. Ahhhh but I forget it wasn't as simple as dumping a PIC on a board and writing a few hundred lines of code - these were the days of REAL hardware. Well, two hours and I'm still confused - maybe worse. After supper it hits me - AHA!!! - maybe the beer helped or something but if finally dawns on me how the "relay pump" scheme these folks designed to run the safety solenoid worked . Another day in the lab and it should work .... _should_ being the operative word but of course there are other pieces to this puzzle that need to fall into place first (including solving some problems with the logic card - that might well involve building a clone board featuring a PIC MCU which emulates the original functions).

Apollo 22HD laser - controller card After fixing a host of "little" problems on the voltage sense card, like blown OP-Amps, that board was saved but the final verdict is that the logic card is TOAST. Having spent hours attempting to determine how it was supposed to work, how the original logic chips worked (Gems like a Teledyne "302" quad NAND gate), and why there were numerous unijunction transistors on the board, it finally comes down to "it will be FAR easier to clone the entire board than fix it". The board itself is non-standard size (at least by today's standards) .... nothing that a bandsaw could not fix!

Original Logic Board circa 1969. Notice the components soldered to the top of the board at all sorts of odd places. Some parts were replaced over the years bot the oldest chip is stamped "6906".
Original Schematic - the original was a true blueprint in poor condition and so was photocopied to enhance contrast (hence the mismatch where pages were taped together).
 1969 Design: Discrete voltage regulators with three transistors and a zener diode, 2010 Design: 7805 and 7812 chips (40 years has made some things easier). 1969: PNP transistors used as low-side drivers with open-collector driver chips, 2010: NPN transistors used and the design was very simplified. 1969: +12V logic levels with logic 0 defined as < +1.4V, 2010: Use of 4N33 optoisolators for all input signals (why fight with odd voltage levels that will never hit "zero"). 1969: Odd 300-series logic chips with UJT transistors for timers, 2010: a single PIC 18F252 MCU to handle all timing and logic functions. 1969: No LEDs on board, 2010: Lots of diagnostic LEDs (esp. since _I_ will be maintaining it).
The old board, and the new board, are seen in the photo to the left.
Of course, the new board has a host of cool features, including a lot of safety code (to check, for example, if the capacitors actually start charging when the supply is enabled and to ensure they fully charge within ten seconds - this will catch problems like a failed dump relay) and code to lock-out the firing system for 45 seconds after firing to prevent overheat (something I no longer have to continually remind students to do). The board has been installed and, after only one "smoke show" (caused by misreading the original schematics for the power supply), was modified and the laser now works well. The laser outputs an 800mJ pulse however only one of the two Q-switch pulses worked. Hmmmm.

Apollo 22HD Output pulses circuitry Back to the clock card (which previously passed a host of static tests on the workbench), and an oscilloscope reveals the output from a transistor driver is "borderline": Logic output levels never really hit "zero" as required (sounds simple but took hours to track down). Replacement of a simple 2N3906 transistor and VOILA! Double-pulse output from the laser is seen to the right: the first pulse (at 900us) is purposely set smaller in amplitude than the second pulse (at 1ms) by adjusting the Q-switch controls.
With the laser working, and stable, it will now be used in the fall in the Advanced Laser Theory course where students will mathematically model the laser and determine how upper-lasing level populations can be shared between multiple output pulses.

And so, another spring/summer project concludes - two years to completely fix the laser. It was an interesting puzzle ... not the first (previous spring/summer term projects included the Sparky eBeam evaporator, and before that a rebuild of a Quantel 660 YAG, and before that the power supply of an MPB CO2 laser, and before that a Bendix high-vacuum evaporator which we built essentially from scratch, ... and way before that it was custom PIC prototyping boards for embedded systems labs), and it certainly won't be the last!

And that's how I spend a good bit of my time in the spring while I'm not teaching. It's sometimes frustrating, often puzzling, and very satisfying ... I would not want to trade that part of my job for anything! And it's one of those things which makes out program at Niagara College unique - if we didn't spend time like this half of our equipment would simply not exist (You don't exactly order a new logic card for a 1969 laser).

Personal Interests and Hobbies:

Workshop One of my oldest hobbies, not surprisingly, is electronics and computers. I recently expanded my workshop (thanks, honey :) from a single room to include a smaller, but well-equipped, electronics area so that it does not have to share with the larger main shop area (12' by 16') now used primarily for woodworking. This small area is equipped specifically for electronics repairs and is equipped with an oscilloscope, multiple lab-type power supplies, meters, a signal generator, a frequency counter, and a logic analyzer. Many pieces of test equipment including the logic analyzer and the main power supply are homebuilt and other pieces are rebuilt like the old nixie frequency counter. The shop also houses a huge number of plastic drawers on the walls housing various generic parts (like resistors, capacitors, and chips) as well as specific parts for my vintage computer collection (of the PDP-8, PDP-11, and Ohio Scientific variety) - parts like old CPU and RAM chips. I have outlined a number of projects I have built on another page, most based on PIC microcontrollers.

What started as a necessity turned into a hobby. When we first moved into our house we were, like many new home owners, house-broke and so could hardly afford luxuries like a new kitchen. I enlisted the help of my father-in-law and we built new cabinets (basic, but functional, particle-board cabinets). Projects around the house continued and renovations have become a hobby. We have changed the entire basement from an apartment into a family room, relocating various walls in the process, and built a breakfast nook onto the house where a covered sunporch previously stood. I built the entire room myself including walls and floor, drywall, and added garden doors to the outside. I did the ceramic tile work for the room as well as our bathroom and a few other jobs for my in-laws - I've actually come to enjoy doing tile work. In 2005, when my kids went with grandma to Slovakia, my wife and I rebuilt a good part of her basement, ripping out the old bathroom and workshop area and replacing it with a new bath and craft room. The old bathroom was tiny: a 30-inch shower and a 24-inch door which opened onto the toilet - claustraphobic at best. Walls and the old shower unit were removed and a new 60-inch wide fiberglass shower unit was installed. Porcelain ceramic tile was laid throughout the entire area, and walls in the new craft room panelled to finish it.

Half-Deacon's Bench While most of the previous renovation projects involved heavy work, more recently I find myself migrating to more delicate projects like cabinetry (I could say something sentimental like "It's in my blood, my grandfather was a cabinetmaker in "the old country"). My shop is relatively well equipped with a larger area designed primarily for woodworking complete with a 220V 2hp dust collector, two bandsaws (one metal, one wood), two drill presses, a belt sander, radial-arm saw, and a mitre saw. Some of my equipment is homebuilt including my router (used as a shaper) from which I built a large, stable, router table with a heavy fence built from a single piece of aluminum channel. Recently, I rebuilt the speed control on it (why would they use a 16A triac on a 15A router ... ever though of building-in a safety margin?). The first project to use such doors was a Half-Deacon's Bench, seen here, which worked-out well. I have also fabricated doors for our camping trailer the same way and have recently completed a set of pine cabinets for the den complete with _real_ raised-panel doors (entirely made in my workshop). The most recent project was a new oak vanity for the upstairs bathroom. The old cabinet, the last remaining original cabinet in the entire house, was an aged particle-board box with doors which haven't stood-up well against exposure to moisture. The new cabinet was built with a real oak front (not even veneer this time) and rail-and-stile oak doors (using a matching set of cutters on my 3hp router) with real oak raised panels.

Sir Adam Beck (I) Generator A history buff, I have an interest in both 19th and 20th century history (including local history of the Niagara region) but my real pet interest is the history of technology. To that end, I have had opportunities to tour numerous old power plants in Niagara including the recently retired Canadian Niagara Power Company's Rankine generating station at the top of Niagara Falls, Sir Adam Beck I at Queenston, and the Decew Falls Plant (which is over 110 years old). None of these plants, when originally built, supplied 60Hz power - most were 25Hz except for the Decew at 66.6Hz! Other technologies I find interesting include Telephone Switching Technologies including the Strowger switch, Nixie tubes, and early steam engine technolgies employed engines such as the Newcomen engine.

Another primary interest is military technology and military history. I find the application of technology in the military to submarines, the atomic bomb, and spaceflight intriguing. To this end, a number of books I read are on these subjects including the required Failure is Not an Option, outlining, firsthand, the history of the early spaceflight program. Growing-up during the Cold War, I developed an interest in espionage activities during the WW-II period onward, no surprise, then, that I like a good spy movie (including many old James Bond flicks) and my favourite TV series of all time is Mission:Impossible a show which, when I was growing-up, I simply could not miss (these were the days before VCRs so the world had to essentially stop when it came on :).

As a family, our primary summer and fall activity is camping (teachers have one of the few professions where you can actually get use from a camper). In the winter and spring, we usually escape to Disneyworld, our favourite vacation spot. An avid amateur winemaker, I have also tried to make beer in the past (usually dark ales) but after a few unspectacular brews I pretty much stick to wine nowadays. My tastes have changed gradually from making purely whites (usually a Riesling or a Sauvignon Blanc) to making more red wines (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon). In the past, we had often toured Niagara wineries discovering new tastes. And I enjoy experimenting (i.e. tasting) different beers (who doesn't :) and in the summer enjoy lighter lagers like Sleeman Honey Brown - this having become my 'standard' in-stock beer. In the winter I often go for heavier ales such as Upper Canada Dark (with 'winter beer' and 'summer beer' it begins to sound like a gasoline commercial doesn't it?). As a whole, my favorite beers are usually brewed in an English or Irish style (e.g. Boddingtons or Smithwicks) as well as Hobgoblin. Occasionally, I enjoy a heavy stout like a Guinness as well and for a change a nice little Saranac Black Forest. Black Forest is a German Schwarzbier, a heavy lager similar to Kostritzer.

At one time I downhill skiied, scuba dived (PADI advanced), played golf (or at least looked like I was chopping wood :), and played the guitar although it's been a few years since I picked-up my old Gibson SG so I wouldn't want to do a recital right now :).