D. C. Smith Consultants
High Frequency Measurement Website
Douglas C. Smith
 
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Boulder City Classroom
BC Lab
Boulder City Classroom Setup for Six People
Boulder City Lab Where We Do Experiments/Demos

Lab Techniques, Robust Design, and Troubleshooting
Attending this class is like insurance against a design or field disaster for your company
and can add to your company's results immediately (this quarter) far in excess of the course fee!
Most of the information presented is from my research and not available elsewhere.

  Next live class April 16, 17, 18, 2024 (three full days)* limited to 6 attendees (three full days)*
or pick your own dates (contact me for details)

Why come to this class?  Why come to Boulder City? click here
Click here for the virtual class
* The most fun an engineer can have! Attendance limited to six lucky people for a great experience.



Design, troubleshooting, and tools are presented that are not taught by others with supporting case histories!

--------------------> Registration is Open! <--------------------
Registration form link
Best to call or send an email before registering
Why come now?
New: "Morning After" presentation on making measurements when you do not have the proper equipment: a case study
One of the best seminar venues in the industry with some people staying on after the seminar to see the area.
This seminar is limited to 6 people to insure the best experience!
Click here to see a walk through of the facilities in Boulder City, NV
Fees: $2150 regular/$1900 for employees of current clients/$1950 for 2 or more registrations from the same organization or paid at the same time

The combination of the unique material presented, the venue, and the passionate presentation will likely make for the best technical short course/seminar you have ever taken! Didn't think a technical presentation can be passionate? This one is. The result is this short course/seminar will likely be the most informative, practical, and FUN seminar you can attend. Some of the information you will learn is not covered anywhere else in the engineering world but will help you hone your engineering skills.

Why come to this class?

  • Unique content from my research that is not found elsewhere for quick debugging of designs to get them functioning and to market quickly.
  • Easy to understand intuitive and graphical approaches avoid complex math.
  • Lots of demonstrations on live circuits to illustrate principles
  • Plenty of time for questions and spur-of-the-moment new experiments to try.
  • Personalized presentation tailored to the attendees interests, not a canned presentation
  • Complimentary evening of consulting on a one-to-one basis including work on your product if desired.
  • Much of the content is derived from my courses at the University of Oxford. New content added regularly

Why come to Boulder City?

  • We are in the desert about 25 miles from Las Vegas and about six miles from Hoover Dam.
  • Easy drive from the tech centers of California and Arizona and easy/cheap flights from other places.
  • Small town with no crowds (especially in the summer when it is hot (but very dry) outside.
  • Boulder City has about a half a million square feet of land per resident, lots opportunity for outdoor activity. I run almost every day, about 230 miles per month. On a six mile run, I might encounter just a couple of people. Because of the dryness, I have no trouble running in 100+ degree temperatures.
  • In the summer it will likely be about 100 degrees, but everything is air conditioned.
  • We have many residents in the 100 year old range!
  • Lots of outdoor activities year round. If desired, I can take you for a sightseeing hike or run. Tours of Hoover Dam (5 miles away) are available. The Vegas Strip is 25 miles away, about 30 minutes.


The seminar includes many design and troubleshooting techniques from my research that have saved my clients millions of dollars and are only available at this seminar. No other event, symposia, seminar, or webinar covers these privately developed techniques.


New topics and features added recently:
  1. New data for waveform purity and E-field radiation from most modern ESD simulators that will help you select a simulator that will be more likely to fail or pass your product. ESD testing standards do not adequately characterize the simulators leading to inconsistent test results. This data will help make sense of test results.
  2. A signifiant improvement to my pulsed injection method of finding design flaws quickly will also be presented at this seminar.
  3. A new troubleshooting technique that can predict failure risk due to product degradation in the field over time! There is nothing like this anywhere in the industry. This applies to both equipment, PCB, and integrated circuit design.
  4. Measurement techniques for the design lab to find design flaws quickly.
  5. An "ESD" test that can find design problems missed by conventional ESD testing and yet cause low probability, but critical field problems.
  6. Expanded section on switching power supply and class D amplifier noise
  7. A new form of ESD/EFT generated by system power supplies (how your system can take itself out)
  8. Analyzing systems as a collection of resonant, tuned circuits for robust design and troubleshooting
  9. Effects of radio frequency signals on analog circuits
  10. EMC test lab errors that can spoil your day (much more common than you would think)
  11. Simple antenna theory for troubleshooting EMC problems (leading to using your index finger as a useful troubleshooting tool)
  12. High Voltage effects on systems (fields as well as new ESD techniques) up to 60 kV which is more common that one would think.
Seminar Outline: click here
This seminar, and its demonstrations, are the product of a lifetime of experimentation and electronic design, 55+ years of electrical engineering (starting at age 12). Major concepts discussed in the seminar are illustrated with experiments on live circuits that were developed over years and are quite unique, enabling a deeper understanding of engineering concepts than seminars usually do. Many new topics and experiments have been added over the last few months that engineers and technicians will find very useful in producing, testing, or debugging new and existing designs of ALL types. No other seminar illustrates principles of design with experiments like this seminar does! Using the techniques presented in this seminar, design problems can be found and fixed in a few days, not weeks or months that are typical in the industry, not to mention being able to avoid the problems in the first place.

Seminar Testimonials
Here is one of many testimonials:
"Your seminar still rates as one of the most educational experiences of my life. It was awesome." KC Armstrong
Click here for more!

This three day seminar takes the best points from my seminars and compresses them into three action packed days with lecture, video, and many demonstrations on live circuits. Time is allowed for attendees to operate the experiments if they want. In two days, you will learn how to make accurate measurements in the lab and then apply those techniques to design verification and troubleshooting as well as EMC problems. The techniques and experiments are geared to the development lab and common equipment found there. ESD/EMI at the system level will be covered as well as applying system level ESD stress to components, such as LEDs, in a test environment.

In addition, the seminar fee includes (for the same price that other seminars in the field cost for just the seminar and lunch):
  1. Breakfast and lunch each day
  2. Tour of the Boulder Dam Museum Tuesday afternoon
  3. A PDF electronic color copy of the notes.
  4. A one year membership in the Boulder Dam Museum for unlimited visits to the Boulder Dam Museum, discounts at the Boulder Dam Hotel, and more.
  5. And, a complimentary consulting session on one of the three evenings after the seminar or Friday morning on a first come, first served basis.
  6. A FUN and educational experience.
During your stay, walk around town and experience the scenic, quaint town of Boulder City, NV. Boulder City is like living in the 1950s but with high speed Internet! However, the glitter of Las Vegas is only ~25 miles away.

Cancellation Policy: Please read before booking this seminar. Since there are only six seats for a great experience I cannot offer refunds, But there are options:
  1. If you need to cancel, I can accomodate you in a future seminar, space permitting, at no additional cost. I keep a seventh seat open for this purpose. Since I hold these seminars every six to 8 weeks, you should be able to attend reasonably soon after the missed seminar. This is more than most instructors offer.
  2. If you are delayed in coming, for instance, your flight is cancelled becasue of a storm, I usually keep the Friday after the seminar open and we can use that day to make up missed material from the first day. Do not plan to arrive the morning of the seminar or late the night before though as that leaves you no options for normal issues like missign the flight. If your flight is cancelled for weather or airline issues, they will usually let you rebook your return flight with no penalty so you can stay the Friday.
  3. If an emergency results in many people not being able to make it to the seminar, such as a giant winter storm or 9/11 type of event, You can either attend a future event or I will reschedule the seminar as soon as possible after the original one. You can either attend this replacement seminar or come to a future one, no additional charge.

This seminar combines features from my University of Oxford classes for three days of practical information. Seminar Outline

Click here to send an email for registration details.

The Boulder City, NV seminar above is a very special event. Attendance is limited to insure a "one-on-one" experience. The seminar is held in beautiful Boulder City, NV near Hoover Dam at the Boulder Dam Hotel. Previous people attending have rated these seminars as the best they have ever taken! There are no lengthly forms to fill out, just contact me by phone or email for details or to register. To see testimonials, click here

Contact me if you are interesting in having a private "seminar-on-demand" for your company in Boulder City or on-site at your company location. The material can be custom tailored to your interests from topics you see on this website for groups of 2 to 8 people on short notice. Click here to send an email requesting details. I can also arrange a session in Boulder City to troubleshoot your design on my test bench for small products.



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Questions or suggestions? Contact me at doug@dsmith.org
Copyright © 2019 Douglas C. Smith