Meet Mobeen, our newest graduate embedded engineer.
At Martel, innovation is in our blood. Our growing team of engineers are always working to improve our products and develop new ideas. Let’s meet the newest member of the engineering team, Mobeen.
Mobeen, can you tell us about yourself and how you joined Martel?
I’ve always been interested in technology. As a child I could often be found taking apart my toys to see how they worked. This love of tinkering led me to a degree in electronic and electrical engineering at the University of Sunderland. I graduated with a first class honours degree in July 2018.
I knew I wanted to work in PCB design after university rather than starting further study. A recruitment agency sent me an advert for a job at Martel and I was very intrigued so I applied. A couple of interviews later, I was very excited when Martel offered me a job. I started work in September 2018.
What projects have you worked on so far at Martel?
One of the first projects I worked on was developing a bespoke solution for a customer to create extra flash memory in a printer. The increased memory would allow the customer to use extra fonts when needed.
The solution had to be easy-to-use, quick and production friendly. After some hardware changes and software coding, I came up with a ‘one button’ solution. It was both an easy-to-use additional step in production, and opened up further possibilities in the future.
After the success of the first project, I was tasked with developing a similar solution – programming the microcontroller of all our printers. We were looking for a programming method that was simple and error-free. I made some hardware and software changes and created a ‘one button’ process which improved the timing of the programming in production, and eliminated errors and downtime.
A different project that I worked on was developing an LCD interface board for our new product, VIDA. We needed a bigger touchscreen that incorporated an off the shelf part. My task was to integrate the part into the VIDA hardware. I did this through re-designing aspects of the board including part selection, the schematic design and the PCB layout. This project was a success, and the new design will be implemented in the next revision of VIDA hardware.
What do you think are some of the most exciting innovations at Martel at the moment?
Martel is a fantastic place to work for those who enjoy innovating and thinking outside the box. We have regular innovation sessions where anyone can pitch an idea. If the idea gains traction, it could become reality!
One of our newest innovations is the VIDA platform which looks set to be a game changer. VIDA is an intermediary solution which upgrades old hardware by connecting it to new electronic systems – often in laboratories – such as ELN (electronic lab notebook) and LIMS (laboratory information management system). VIDA means that users don’t need to manually transcribe results from equipment. Instead, VIDA does it automatically, which saves time and eliminates errors. VIDA can connect to a huge range of equipment including laboratory scales, pH meters and much more, and the information it records can be downloaded and imported into the software packages that the laboratory already uses.
Some of the big benefits of VIDA that we’re particularly excited about are its compatibility and seamless integration. It makes laboratory work much easier. Lab managers can compare at a glance how results vary depending on the user or the time of day. And laboratories don’t have to buy different ‘digitalising’ solutions as VIDA supports a lot of them. Obviously, this will also save laboratories money.
We’re also looking into creating smart printers that work from any device and can connect to anything. It’s an exciting time to be at Martel, with lots of great new products in the pipeline. I’m looking forward to seeing what our next ground-breaking idea is going to be!
