Hardware Engineering Portfolio
mcWankeBOT — Hardware Module Design Considerations
Field Notes — REV 2026.A — Approved for Production
what is this?
Field notes from two decades of building things that beep, blink, dispense cash, and record courtroom proceedings.
what kind of hardware?
Intelligent cash management systems. Professional AV hardware. Custom PCBs, FPGA implementations, MEMS microphone arrays, and lots of DSP. Also, some fun personal projects from building my smarthome.
did you build all of this?
Led the engineering. Designed the systems. Sat through the board bring-ups, the smoke tests, and the certification labs. Design responsible.
what does field proven mean?
The products shipped. The safes held the cash. The microphones captured the record. The video switcher switched the video. Nobody called at 2am.
how do I get more information?
Full bill of materials available upon request. Assembly required. Lead time: one face-to-face conversation.
mcWankeBOT — Hardware Module
Engineering Drawing
Hardware Portfolio: Field Proven
REV 2026.A
Hardware Portfolio: Field Proven
REV 2026.A
| PROJECTmcWanke HW | DRAWN BYmcWanke |
| REV2026.A | STATUSAPPROVED |
| DATE2026-04-02 | SHEET1 OF 1 |
U1 – FRONT ELEVATION — Cash Management Systems
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Ascent Series — Intelligent Cash Management
0-to-1 product line — concept through manufacturing
▸Bill validating safes — validates, stores, and prepares cash for deposit
▸Coin dispensing units — controlled dispensing with transaction tracking
▸Note dispensing units — secure dispensing with reporting by user, shift, or day
▸Networked accounting — up to 6 devices linked as a single accounting unit
▸Icon-based touchscreen interface — designed for retail environments
▸Biometric identification unit — led design of fingerprint enrollment and validation system for user access control
▸Unlimited user enrollment — scalable across large retail and food service deployments
▸First-year sales: $1.5M
R1 – SIDE ELEVATION — Professional AV Hardware
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Courtroom & Institutional AV Systems
Professional spoken-word recording environments
▸48 channel audio mixer — up to 20 mic inputs, 16 audio tracks, preloaded DSP, plug-and-play courtroom deployment
▸Dante Audio over IP — up to 4 Dante inputs and outputs for networked audio distribution
▸Custom boundary microphone — MEMS array, onboard DSP, 6 selectable polar patterns, voice masking, 13-LED status indicators
▸Custom gooseneck microphone — onboard DSP, button for action mapping, multi-color LED status indicator
▸HDMI video matrix switcher — 12-channel 1080P HD switching, 6 HD-SDI + 3 HDMI outputs, picture-in-picture, private mode
▸FPGA implementation — custom logic for HDMI video matrix switching
▸EMI/RFI shielding and ESD protection across microphone product lines
C1 – DETAIL A — Design for Manufacturing & Compliance
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From Concept to Production-Ready
DFM, certification, and manufacturing partnerships
▸DFM — engineering decisions made with production cost, assembly efficiency, and quality in mind from day one
▸Rapid prototyping — iterative physical prototyping through early development cycles
▸3D print prototyping — form factor validation, fitment testing, and early user feedback before tooling commitment
▸Plastic injection molding design — draft angles, wall thickness, gate placement, tooling considerations — applied to fingerprint detector housing and microphone LED diffuser layers
▸BOM strategy and component sourcing — cost, availability, and supply risk management
▸Local and offshore manufacturing partnerships — managed through prototyping and production scale-up
▸CE certification — European market compliance across multiple product lines
▸FCC Part 15 — unintentional radiator compliance
▸RoHS compliance — restriction of hazardous substances
▸TÜV certification — independent safety testing and product certification
▸Trade show representation — InfoComm, NACS, ISC West
C2 – DETAIL B — Electronics Design & Board Engineering
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Custom Electronics — Design Through Production
From silicon to system integration
▸ARM7-based custom CPU board — designed and specified for embedded safe platform
▸120V power distribution board — designed for intelligent safe power management
▸Custom fingerprint reader electronics — designed for biometric enrollment and validation
▸Large 7-layer PCB design — high-complexity boards for audio mixing and DSP processing
▸Large onboard DSPs — real-time audio processing on embedded hardware
▸FPGA design — custom implementation for HDMI video matrix switching logic
▸DSP integration on microphone hardware — per-unit DSP on boundary and gooseneck microphones
▸Board bring-up and smoke testing — iterative revision validation through production
C3 – DETAIL C — Audio Engineering
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Microphone & Audio Systems
From MEMS elements to courtroom-grade spoken-word capture
▸MEMS microphone array design — multi-element silicon microphone arrays for boundary and gooseneck products
▸Beamforming — directional audio capture through multi-element MEMS array processing
▸Polar pattern design and programming — six selectable patterns: supercardioid, hypercardioid, cardioid, subcardioid, omnidirectional, bidirectional
▸DSP programming — signal processing chains for EQ, gain control, noise rejection, and voice masking
▸Dante Audio over IP integration — networked audio distribution across courtroom installations
▸Automatic microphone mixing — AXIO platform automatic gain and switching logic
▸Spoken word optimization — tuning for intelligibility in high-stakes recording environments
▸CE certification — audio products certified for European market
J1 – DETAIL D — Personal Projects
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Low-Voltage Electronics & Home Engineering
Local-first. No cloud dependency. Accountability: human.
▸ESP32 microcontroller projects — WiFi/Bluetooth embedded development
▸WLED — addressable LED control via ESP32, custom lighting automation
▸ratgdo — garage door controller integration with Home Assistant via ESP32
▸Frigate NVR — local AI object detection using YOLOv9 on Google Coral TPU
▸Ollama — local LLM serving with Qwen2.5VL:3b for image description and classification
▸Wyoming protocol — fully local voice pipeline via Docker using Whisper STT and Piper TTS with custom wake words
▸Home Assistant — all personal hardware projects connected to local smart home platform
▸Low-voltage sensor deployment — environmental monitoring throughout home and backyard
▸RabbitMQ message broker — Docker-hosted event messaging for automation workflows
▸3D printed enclosures — custom cases and mounts for personal electronics projects
▸ML bird detection — computer vision model for backyard wildlife identification
mcWankeBOT
| REV | DESCRIPTION | DATE |
|---|---|---|
| A | Initial Release | 2026 |
Portfolio
A human, people-first approach to engineering and management. AKA: How to build great engineering teams. How can I help?
Projects, results, and a few honest failures from a career building software that actually shipped with great teams.
Professional and personal projects around hardware, sensors, and low-voltage electronics.
Some of my personal projects to share with the world. Code, designs, and a lot of fun.