“EMC for IoT” Presentation at the IoT Leeds Meetup

I had the pleasure of speaking at the local IoT Leeds meetup, held at the newly (and finally) renovated “Platform” venue just outside of the train station. The views over Leeds city centre from our 10th floor suite where the event was being held were impressive.

view over Leeds from floor 10 of the Platform building

Paul Wealls of Mokanix had the first slot and gave an interesting talk on their development toolkit for mobile applications. I’m not a software engineer (my code makes grown men weep) but the usefulness of this cross network toolkit was evident and seemed to generate a lot of interest among the attendees. Well worth checking out if that’s your bag.

The synopsis of my presentation, titled “EMC for IoT” was a very high level overview of the European EMC and Radio Regulations for IoT hardware, CE marking, and the importance of spectrum protection through compliance. Because I didn’t know the makeup of the audience beforehand it was tricky to know exactly what sort of content to put in. I opted for more graphics than words which gives more flexibility in the subjects covered.

emc for iot slide front page

In the end, in the audience of around twenty people, there were two (and a half) hardware engineers, mostly software engineers but everyone had a technical background. As such I skewed the presentation towards the general but still went into detail where necessary. I really enjoy speaking on EMC matters and it’s great fun to share knowledge with like-minded interested professionals.

The questions received after the presentation were all very intelligent and well thought out. They ranged from instances of counterfeit components causing EMC problems, understanding risk, the costs involved and the use of mobile devices on aircraft. Despite what can be seen as a dry subject the feedback from the presentation was very good.

james pawson emc speaking at iot leeds

photo credit Will Newton

It was also great to see my ex colleague Chris who I hadn’t seen for a long time and catch up with him. We both headed to the Leeds Brewery Tap for a pint of Midnight Bell with Will (organiser) and Neil and for a chat that ranged from the local job market to AI before hopping on the train home. All in all, a good evening!

I’m looking to take the talk out on the road for other meetups or organisations so if you know anyone running an technical event where this would fit in then I’d be interested to hear about it.