GPS Engineer

I am a contract GPS engineer or GPS consultant for hire.  I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I added this page out of self preservation.  I apologize in advance for the tone.  Hopefully you will get a chuckle or two if you try to put yourself in my shoes.  Let’s go down a list of facts.

• I have a full time design engineering job.  I am NOT interested in relocating or another full time job.
• I will NOT fund your project.
• I will NOT work for free on the promise of a percentage of something in the future.   Possible exceptions are school projects.  I have helped on several of these.
• I am NOT a good choice for a military contract.  I don’t have a security clearance and have not done military GPS before.
• I will NOT be a professional witness in your lawsuit.  Not happening.  I will pull my fingernails out for fun instead!  Ironically this is the number one thing I am contacted for.
• I am a hardware engineer for the most part.  I can do embedded software but things will go faster when I am teamed with a software developer.

For fun I added these below….

• I do NOT need SEO work done for my website.  You are wasting your time. Thanks.  I get contacted for this at least 3 times a week.
• I won’t be buying “Canadian Pharmacy Vigara” (misspelling intentional).
• Nor do I need hot Russian babes.

I don’t mean to be rude or mean about any of this.  This is business.  Actually I am very easy to get along with.  But, I don’t want to waste your time or mine.

The tips and questions below are meant to help you if you are an aspiring entrepreneur.  If you are part of a large corporation and reading this you will probably already know these things.

Most people who contact me have no idea how much it takes to get consumer electronics projects off the ground.  I can’t blame them.  They haven’t done it and I have.  What is obvious to me is surprising to many.

• Most consumer electronics or industrial projects are put in a custom enclosure.  If you will need a custom made plastics enclosure for your new high volume project it will take a mechanical engineer with CAD, plastics design & injection molding experience.  Yes, you can do a few prototypes with 3D printing but most companies and buyers consider these unacceptable as a final product.
• Tooling costs on such a custom enclosure can be a super wide range of prices due to variations such as overall complexity, waterproof abilities, # of openings in the case, tool life expectancy, materials and so on.  The above mechanical engineer can give you better guesses than I based on your needs.  But I have witnessed designs and molds for enclosures cost between $10K-$250K in tooling costs for a textured final product.  Are you sweating yet?
• To compete in consumer electronics in high volume you may have to manufacture in China.  They don’t lift a finger without an expectation of getting a pretty large order.  Prototype quantities before and after texturing may range in the 50 piece range while 500 pieces is a small production run for plastic molders.  Yes there are some smaller molders with less volume requirements, usually also with less quality control, less buying power to keep your line open and so on.  I have dealt with several on both ends.  Again, this is business.  Much of this depends on your needs.
• Have you done a market study?  At least searched for it online?  No need to design something if it won’t sell.  Sure YOU know it will sell but will it really?  Is this business or a pipe dream?  This doesn’t mean you have to have a huge team especially with so many tools available on the internet.
• Do you have a marketing group or person?  If you are that person as well as the designer, the website builder etc.  You will be spreading yourself to thin.  This is the voice of experience.
• Do you have (or trying to BUILD) a team for your new project?  You and I do not make a “team”.  I do GPS hardware, electrical design, layout circuit boards and so on.  I can work with mechanical engineers for packaging.  I often work with programmers to develop human interfaces and hardware protocols.  I can manage the project.  In other words, you can’t show up with an idea and I do everything else.  You don’t have that long.
• Do you have an investor or sufficient cash to fund expenses that inevitably come up?  (I have been told “money is no object” only to have them freak out the first time they need to spend $100.  Not kidding on this one!)  One contract I did I showed them a piece of equipment they needed necessary to solve their problem.  They went out and bought it NOW.  A few days later, after I showed them how to use it properly … problem solved.  They spent thousands but saved thousands in lost time.  The contract was on time.
• Do you know who your target market is?  Demographics?  Timeline…
• Where are your sales outlets?  Retail – wholesale?
• Do you need prototypes?  How many?  When?

I could go on but you get the idea.  Certainly you don’t need to have all these DONE before I will talk to you.  I am not saying that at all.  I am just trying to make you think.  If you are serious, then this isn’t a hobby for you and it certainly isn’t for me.

Let me say this.  I love GPS.  I love consumer electronics.  This is fun.  However, due to several other businesses that I own and operate I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to these projects.  Nor can I affect my engineering day job.  So I am not looking for a 1 yr project and you probably won’t want to pay my rate that long anyway.

Typical projects:

• Troubleshoot a design that is already designed but doesn’t perform to spec.
• Spec an off the shelf module for your project.  Depending on your needs there are many modules we can get for your application.
• If volumes are very high we can design from the chipset level and use vendor supplied embedded software to save on cost.
• Troubleshoot EMC issues.

My standard rate is $100/hr at MINIMUM and can be more depending on the job.  You can see that we can burn up some money pretty quickly at that rate.  I am honest and very conservative with my billable time but even at that it adds up.  For a new entrepreneur this may seem like a lot of money but frankly not just everyone can do this or has the experience to qualify.

Am I the best?  Probably not.  There are lots of fantastic GPS experts working at the GPS chipset manufacturers.  Unfortunately, most of the consumer product designers are in Asia now.

Can I help you?  Maybe.  So far I have yet to test a GPS that I could not find fault in.  GPS design is not easy.  These things pick up signals at 1.57542GHz.  That signal is smaller than the atmospheric noise.  So imagine how easy it is for a GPS to pick up the electronics sitting in the same box with your GPS.  Between antenna tuning and internally generated noise these are the two biggest problems I have seen to date.

If I haven’t scared the HELL out of you and you are still interested in using me as your GPS engineer then you can use the contact form to get in contact with me!

I wish you all the best in your project.

Rex