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Avolites

In 1994 we (my wife and I) moved to the UK so I could work at Avolites  R&D 
my official job title is product designer, and that is what I tend to do, design a product, from the ground up, product definition, mechanics, occasional software, production documentation and training, manuals and product photo shoots, I even designed the  building interior to build the ART dimmers (AKA the ART house)

Avolites is a hands-on company which suits me.

It all started after many years of harassing Avolites for a 3 phase dimmer Steve and Ric said, well build us one then. Two years later  the ART4000  was launched at Plasa and earned us an award.
A few years later we decided to make a lower cost dimmer system and this time within a year  out rolled the ART2000 which has proven to be a monster hit. after the ART2000 T4 came the ART2000 T2  a smaller version. One day Andy Martin and Chris Millard of AFM walked in and asked for a "few" changes to made to the ART2000 system for film and TV work. I spend a few months working on it and boy did that pay off. the unofficial film list below is a testament to the ART2000. Then came the ART2000 Install, the installation version of the ART2000. again changing the map off dimming, by providing a build in load patch.
The latest addition to the original ART2000 has been the inclusion of a DMX splitter
as by now we do not see the ART2000 as a dimmer rack anymore but as a The Hub of your lighting system with  mains distribution, data distribution and dimming all from one easy to configure box. 

The latest part in the ART2000 list is the ART2000s (solo) a 19" stand alone 12 channel dimmer. I'm sure this dimmer is going to change the expectations of dimmers.
This monster boasts  probably 50 times the processing power as a 48Way, which we tend to put to good use. 

At Avolites I'm also involved with the CE standards and EMC testing. All radiation testing is done on Oxfordshire farm, where we have a comparatively quite environment. If we only could get our schedule to to align with the summer.. the lowest point was snow boots.

Avolites products I have been associated with

• D3 floppy disk drive controller card
• ART4000 electrical and electronic design, software
• AKS Z80 replacement by ST90T40 (an Z80 emulator in an ST9)
• ART2000 T4 mechanical, electrical , electronic design, original software release
• ART2000 T2 mechanical design,
• ART2000 32A and 63A modules 
• ART2000i mechanical, electrical design 
• D4 classic mechanical design
• D4 elite mechanical design
• D4 Vision mechanical design
• ART2000s mechanical design, electrical design, Phase angle control software
• D4 Pilot mechanical design
• eDMXTube
• wouldn't you like to know....

Further all mechanical production issues come my way, as is the photo styling for new products (my last bit of active lighting left in my life)

Chips I have driven: (dream on, chips that drove me mad)

ST ST90T40, ST90R40 and the best off all the ST90R50
Rabbit (not for work though)
DsPic (we where early adopters....)

tools I tend to use

• MS office bits like excel, word, outlook, project, FrontPage
• Autodesk Autocad from 11 to 2004
• Autodesk Inventor 6,7,8,8P,9P...
• MpLab
• GNU st9 toolset
• Photoshop
  

I am not the only one at Avolites. R&D consists off (in no particular order)

Adam Proffitt, fellow designer, the man behind most electronics nowadays and a great problem solver
Alwyn Fernandes PCB designer and data master. he has to fit all Adams bits onto the limited space I gave him
Robert Henry  The man who lives in the shimmering world between R&D and  production.

Ric Salzedo  the MD and R&D director, although Ric does not get involved in the daily or detailed business of development. He often brakes a deadlock with surprising simple solutions. Good at playing the " user" who has not read the manual and is now breaking our just developed product." why does it do that ? RTFM!!! 

Further R&D gets help from the some very knowledgeable persons

David Morrell. technical guru. who always asks why
Pat Sullivan, metal works, often gets calls from me starting with  "I have this idea" his hard must sink many times 
Chris Crockford, Madcap student, with his troop the fathers of eDMX, what they do with sheep is unbelievable  

Dimmers are build by Harry, Jegga, Rob, raffy, Sonia, Mastroniks, and Allner Hamlin

Azure.PRL,Sap,eDMX,splitters are tested by Lee,Owen

The D4 range is assembled by Mas (cool)and  Alner Hamlin 

Nick and Ben service bits from around the world

Tim, Paul and Mac , deal with goods, in, out, and kiting

Lindsey trains the users as manuals widely are ignored

Dushy, Karti, Melany keep track of money, bits, and goods, the fish bowl ladies

Meena, and Shandy control production. always under siege of ever decreasing delivery times and ever increasing lead times.

Shahid and his software troops, Paul, Olly, tom,  write all the console software and the PC software. They have this cool meeting table we are all jealous of. need to organize a raid on that office. I know we are outnumbered, but we are faster ( as we do it in assembly ) 

Sales, that can only be Steve Warren, Koy (SDL), May (LSE) Chris (TIE), Amanda (ALAS) nice posh office with a fish bowl square. except for a few pictures, nothing to raid. 

Some outside characters

The Sullivan Clan Them who make all our metalwork.
Evans Graphics, Steve and Richard 
Mastroniks Andy and Ian (never argue with him, he's big)
Alner Hamlin, them in Bristol silently building piles of consoles

• Proof of live
• Harry Potter 1,2,3,4
• Matrix (not sure which one)
• Star wars (not out yet) some of us have seen the set....
• Charley and the chocolate factory 
  as far as we know the biggest gathering of T4's, 50 racks 16A and 32A
• hitchhikers guide