What current projects are you working on?

Currently my main embedded project is the automated water quality monitoring system, and R&D on associated sensors.  I also do specialist IT consulting (mainly Linux and firewalls) for a few corporate clients.

 What is your background?

I had a great interest in computers and electronics as a child, and designed and built my first "commercial" embedded system for an automated school bell when I was 16 years old.  My first job was working as an electronics technician for 2 years, moving into comms, networking, and Unix admin, and then as an developer, DBA, and manager in a software company for 18 years (accounting software running mostly on Unix and Linux).  At the beginning of 2008 I started my own consulting business, which has always been my dream.

I was ask to assist with ongoing development of a project which was using the Gumstix Verdex for control and data logging in an automated water quality monitoring system.  As I had plenty of experience with Linux, it was very easy to get started modifying the software to suit changing requirements.

What gumstix products are you using in the project?

We started with the Verdex, and recently moved to the Verdex Pro without any issues.

It is so small, and has plenty of processing power for additional functionality, while still using very little power.  It has serial ports, I2C and GPIO, along with other communication options to suit future requirements - Bluetooth, Ethernet, and WiFi - with very little extra engineering effort on our part.

In may "spare time" I enjoy experimenting with CNC milling, and I am building a model robot based on K9 from Doctor Who, which was originally going to use a much larger x86 based motherboard running WinCE... but now will most likely use a Gumstix and Robostix.

Yes. The Gumstix is so small and easy to use, and Linux is the perfect environment for rapid development.  We are using sqlite and gnokii, along with C code and shell scripts.  Once you've got the build environment setup, it is so easy to work with - just like any other Linux system.

 .