Summer is intern growing season at Electric Imp and we’re excited that four smart ones have firmly planted themselves around our Los Altos, California offices for the next few months. Have no fear, we promise to make sure they’re well fed and watered, and get some sun at least once a day.
Kidding aside, we’re pleased to welcome our new interns (or should we call them imp-terns?) Gino, Siddhartho, Kara and Ayush to the fold.
Here’s a bit of info about them and why they chose to summer with us:
Gino Miglio is a Computer Engineering major at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He applied to the Electric Imp internship program because he wanted a challenging experience that would provide good exposure to both hardware and software in an interesting and relevant industry – the Internet of Things.
A few weeks into his internship, Gino has honed his surface-mount soldering skills (“0402 resistors and QFN packages, ugh!,” says Gino) and learned a lot about developing software for the imp. He is currently creating example code for imp users to add LCDs and E-Ink displays to their imp-enabled projects.
Gino’s ideal imp-enabled device would be a network of multi-colored LEDs throughout his apartment that indicate how much time he has to eat breakfast before the train leaves him behind. Fortunately, his internship will give him plenty of time to build it before returning to school this fall.
Siddhartho Bhattacharya is studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at UC Berkeley, and was drawn to Electric Imp out of a love for devices. Sidd is excited about the prospect of working with the Imp, which he feels ideally addresses a problem he often encountered as a maker: finding a simple connectivity solution to “dumb” devices.
This summer Sidd is focusing on designing, prototyping, and engineering applications for the Imp – from building the hardware to finishing the firmware – in order to meet requirements for certain products requested by customers.
In a perfect world, Sidd’s dream Imp-powered device would be wearable, a bracelet, perhaps, that with WiFi connectivity would allow a user to control a variety of nearby devices – a television, kitchen appliances or house lighting, for instance – with simple hand gestures.
Kara Vane is taking a break from her Business Administration major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to join Electric Imp’s business development team – Bill Podrasky and Peter Keyashian – this summer. She’ll work alongside Bill and Peter and engage in a variety of projects including market analysis and customer research, and will attend various industry meetups and trade shows on behalf of Electric Imp.
Electric Imp was compelling to Kara since she is fascinated by the Internet of Things space and impressed by the concept of the Imp and our mission to connect all devices.
Kara would like to have an Imp-enabled device that would control energy consumption for various devices around the home.
Ayush Sood is enrolled at Stanford University where he is studying a blend of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, with a focus on Mechatronics. Honoring an early childhood fascination with how things work Ayush intends to add some mechanical engineering classes so that when he thinks of an idea or looks at a machine he’ll have the capacity to build it. Given the thriving maker culture at Electric Imp we suspect he’ll get plenty of opportunities this summer.
In considering internships, the Electric Imp platform was the difference maker. Ayush feels the Imp can make a huge impact in the daily lives of many people, and is excited to work with a technology that can lead people to think, “Well, I don’t know how I lived without that before.”
As for the ultimate Imp-enabled device, Ayush would like to create a mechanism that sends alerts when he has mail – snail mail. Stanford students are assigned PO boxes for physical mail and must trek some distance to the post office to check for deliveries, making it one of the most inefficient uses of time in Ayush’s everyday life.
And with that, we can already envision Ayush’s first project: tying a remote motion sensor placed in his mailbox to our “Charley the ch-imp” hackathon creation that will squawk, “You’ve got mail!” whenever a letter is delivered.
We’re super excited to have Gino, Siddhartho, Kara and Ayush aboard and look forward to their contributions and seeing what we can learn from them this summer!
If you are interested in our internship program or full time opportunities at Electric Imp, please visit our website for more information or contact jobs@electricimp.com.
Brandon Harris
Senior Systems Engineer