Development Expertise

Ronald Gremban, ForSites' founder, President, and technical lead, has over 25 years and an especially broad base of in-depth engineering experience, including:

Graphics
System architecture
Project management
Realtime networked systems
Multimedia hardware and software
User interfaces
Database systems

Object-oriented software and language design
Test and development tools and infrastructure
Documentation
Life-cycle planning
Education
Rapid prototyping
Hardware design

Software consulting clients have included Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, and Xerox PARC. Website clients include the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District.

Hardware design: Extensive digital, audio, video (NTSC RS-170A, PAL, & PAL-M), and high-power electronics design, including electric vehicles, solar energy (as sales and development engineer for SunLit Systems, Inc.), and other environmentally-friendly technologies.

Project and Business Management: Managed all aspects of a product-based business startup (Private Eye Cases) including creation of its e-commerce site www.PrivateEyeCases.com. Successfully managed many small to medium-sized groups of engineers and development projects.

Website authoring: Microsoft FrontPage and Breakthrough Software's Internet Business Breakthrough, both in-house.

Graphics: In-house image manipulation via Ulead PhotoImpact, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator, graphical layout via Adobe FrameMaker.

Languages: Extensive complex systems and application code in C, C++, and Smaltalk (learned at Xerox PARC); SQL, HTML, Java (before the advent of Java, helped design TSS's TDL, nearly identical to Java except without security and applets); some PostScript, Forth, FORTRAN, Pascal, and BASIC; expert in use of UNIX and cgi-script tools such as sh, csh, sccs, make, awk, lex, yacc, Perl, and the sockets interface to TCP/IP.

Operating systems/platforms: In-house: UNIX (Sun Solaris 2.x (SPARC)), Windows 95 & NT Server; Other: HP-UX, IBM's UNIX (RS/6000), DEC's UNIX & VMS (VAX & MIPS).

Database: Extensive experience with relational (Sybase, Illustra, and in-house Microsoft Access and SQL Server), object-oriented (Illustra and Gemstone), and hierarchical (Raima) databases; query-response and realtime data flow; SQL, OODB, and library-level interfacing; data modeling; creation of dynamically reconfiguring model-driven software.

GUIs: developed for X-windows (directly) and for Microsoft Windows via Visual Smalltalk Enterprise with WindowBuilder.

Development environments: In-house: Microsoft FrontPage (HTML), Asymetrix SuperCede (Java), ObjectShare VisualWorks (Smalltalk), Microsoft Office Professional, ISDN internet access; Other: Centerline C++, Energize C++, and Microsoft Visual C++.

Systems design: Realtime, networked, client/server, web-based, etc.

Last update: 7/30/04

Video design details:

Designed a specialized video capture board for Fortune Computers, long before most functions were integrated onto ICs.

Created and managed the Continuing Engineering Department, after managing the Systems Test Department of Tektronix's Grass Valley Group. Redesigned television studio video special effects and switching systems. Designed and built a distributed system of swept-frequency signals and differential probes for switching system analysis, adjustment, and certification against their specifications.

Helped build KTVN TV in Reno, NV. Did equipment maintenance and video switching there and for KOLO TV, also in Reno.

Electric vehicle design details:

Currently acting as technical lead for the California Cars Initiative's PRIUS+ project, designing prototype modifications for turning a 2004 Toyota Prius into a pluggable hybrid, capable of significantly reducing gasoline consumption via several miles of electric propulsion after each overnight charge.

Designed the propulsion and electrical system for Sebring-Vanguard's electric Citycar during the 1974 oil crisis. The car was featured on the cover of the June 1974 Popular Science magazine (the blue one in the picture).

Designed propulsion and charging systems for Electric Fuel Propulsion in Detroit. EFP's flagship in 1969 was a converted Renault R-10 that could be driven 60 miles at 60 mph after a 1-hour charge.

Helped build and drive Caltech's entery in the cross-continental Great Electric Car Race between Caltech and MIT in the summer of 1968. We won the race from Pasadena, CA, to Boston, MA, by 1/2 hour out of 8.75 days and nights of continuous racing, thereby becoming the first people to cross the continent via electric power. The race -- the great grandfather of other past and current clean vehicle competitions -- was spearheaded by my colleague Walley Rippel, covered by Machine Design magazine, and got worldwide press coverage.