About Me
Personal Stuff:
Hi, I am Anurag (aka The Lithiumhead) and I am from India. I currently live in Pune with my wife. We often travel to Mumbai to be with my parents (mom, dad, grandma, brother). My wife's family is from Lucknow (think mutton and tameez)
Besides being a tech geek (think a room full of gadgets and circuits boards, think characters from The Big Bang Theory), I have numerous other interests: collecting stuff (who doesn't), going on adventure trips, photography (especially of insects and Mumbai!). I enjoy most kinds of music (Savage Garden, POTF, The Corrs, Linkin' Park, Indian Ocean) but suspect that I am constitutionally incapable of dancing, although I am sure my friends wife will help me get over that someday soon! and love working out to the tunes over at Danzofit.
I have this innate thirst to explore and learn about things around me - as a result of which I become a jack of many trades and master of a select few. According to my friends, even though I may not have answer to all the questions, I do end up coming up with solutions to most problems! (True Jugaadu at heart). I like reading books, I have quite a few of them (list here - The Fountainhead, H2G2 & JPod are my all time favourites!).
I like making stuff (circuits, art, websites, blah..). The adventures we have while making (or trying to make) things are the stories worth telling - stories which define us as an individual. I love to tell these and hear similar ones from others. (so of them are here on my blog!)
I swear by my friends - they are the life and soul of, well, life itself!
I truly believe that we all lend meaning to each other lives: the experiences I have had so far, the people I have come across, the books I have read, my friends and my family have only strengthened my belief is this - "you are, therefore I am". Earth is a living planet and we all have our parts to play. Forget about fate. Forget about destiny. When we leave the stage, all that would matter is the feeling inside of you that would say "part well played!".
The "lithium" in my screen name refers to the highly reactive nature of the element Lithium. I have been told my imagination is as hyperactive as the element is reactive. At the time of choosing my screen name, I wasn't aware of the drug, the song or the battery chemistry by the same name.
I have Renal agenesis - I was born with only one kidney (the only one is on the left side).
I found this out when I was 26. It has been a source of surprise and amusement among my friends and family ever since. About 1 in 750 people are born this way and have zero point zero health complications arising from this. Totally no extra care is needed for such a condition.
I am an avid runner. My current race tally can be found here.
I am also an Amateur Radio Operator. My Callsign is VU2AXC
Paragliding is another of my hobbies and I am a club pilot attached to Temple Pilots
Professional Stuff:
I am an electronics engineer by training and by profession.
I have been working for 15 years (13 years in the field of Systems Software / Embedded Hardware and 2 in Teaching)
I am currently serving as a Senior Systems Software Engineer at Tarana Wireless where we are developing the next generation of fixed wireless networking devices with beamforming capabilities for the telecom sector.
My previous workplaces have been (latest first):
RLARD as one of the founder directors. We manufactured dental loupes and LED headlamps under the brand name Ergoptix. Here I meddled in all aspects of running the company - looking after finance, customer service, web presence, manning the booth at trade fairs and conferences.
Teach For India as a fellow working towards eradicating education inequity in India. I taught a batch of 120 students (3 classrooms full) for 2 years from 2014 to 2016 at Kilbil Public School which is a low income private school located in Janwadi, Pune. I taught English literacy, Mathematics and Geography to the students in their 7th and 8th grade. The facebook page for our classrooms is here.
Greenvity Communications's India Development Center (Pune), India as a Senior Software Engineer. My work involved developing embedded software (linux kernel modules) for power line communications.
Tata Consultancy Services, Pune, India as an I.T. Analyst, I was part of a team which developed embedded software for Automotive Infotainment Systems.
Laboratory for Applied Research in Electronics in Navi Mumbai, India, where I spearheaded the development of a modular prototyping system for students and professionals called UNIBlocks. These modules can be used to quickly assemble and test proof-of-concept prototypes for new embedded systems designs. They are sort of like LEGO Bricks for Embedded Systems.
Larsen & Toubro EmSyS (is now L &T Technology Services), Mumbai, India as a Systems Engineer. L & T EmSyS was my first workplace after graduation.
Other noteworthy tidbits:
I have written a textbook on the 8051 microcontrollers for undergrad engineering students in collaboration with Prof. Dhananjay V. Gadre with whom I have also worked on many fun projects (some of which resulted in articles published in magazines like EDN and Circuit Cellar).
My tech blog has lots of technical tidbits which would interest EEs - stuff like screencaps of waveforms of all kinds of signal or the photos of insides (and outsides) of electronic components.
Recently, I have been meddling around with many IoT/M2M enabling technologies and platforms and am working on/have completed many projects: Home Weather Station, Twitter Lamp, Router Rebooter, Internet Connected Energy Meter and Voting Pads. You can read about them here.
My professional goal is to design mission-critical electronics which go into huge transportation machines like trains and aircraft. In parallel, I would also work on imparting training to the next breed of engineers.
Last updated: 11 June 2021
GMail: lithiumhead
Photos of my Teach For India Classroom: