Some of the Designs
Below are some of the designs I was involved in or personally did. I was the engineering manager of GPS at Lowrance Electronics for over 20 years. (Before that we were just called the Navigation Group because we did Loran C products.) All in all I was at Lowrance (turned Navico) for just shy of 31 years. I managed our Navigation Group / GPS Group for most all of that time. I worked in the sonar group prior to forming the navigation group in 1985.
Some of these designs below were done by people reporting to me. Even if I didn't do a design it was my job to work with my engineers and make sure that they succeeded. I consulted in various forms on most all of them. Sometimes I didn't have to help too much because we had some very talented engineers at Lowrance in the GPS group.
I personally was responsible for the AccuNav Sport which was our first handheld GPS. It was my idea to have the flip up antenna that folded down to cover the LCD when in storage. I was the first individual to layout the Rockwell International chipset outside of their company. Everyone else they sold complete GPS engines to.
I also did our original iFinder and several version of it. The faceoffs were an idea that I had. Unfortunately the public did not see value in being able to change the look of their GPS as much as they did their cell phones.
I was also responsible for the idea of putting MP3s into standalone GPS products. We were the first company to actually go to market with an MP3 player in a standalone GPS product. I had to fight to get it in. Marketing did not want it. Years later, MP3 players were everywhere in GPS products. We did not take advantage of being first. Even to THIS DAY the Lowrance iWay 600c is the ONLY GPS product that stores thousands of songs on its internal harddrive and seamlessly plays them without having to switch modes. It has an internal FM modulator that can broadcast to your car FM radio. So you can listen to your favorite songs and when the turn to your waypoint comes up you hear "Turn right at the next intersection" in your radio. Pretty cool stuff.
Many years ago I envisioned GPS products, cell phones and PDAs all becoming one device and wrote a white paper describing the capabilities of our GPS products that we never implemented. I saw the capability to do PDA functions with touchscreen, play games and so much more. Sometimes, I get a little ahead of management philosophy.
We DID manage to product some handheld GPS products that had full quality stereo MP3 players, electronic compass built in and microphone to record your voice. The iFinder PhD had all of these. The iFinder M & M stood for "Map and Music" These units have SD card slots on them so put on as much music as you can afford!
The designs below, honestly are not all of them we produced. It does not include every model variation nor does it include what we called the White Module, which was the external GPS for the marine units. The public might call it a puck. Nor do I show the iGPS (internal GPS) products where either me or my team designed GPS engines internal to marine products. The AM1000/2000c & iWay series below is an example of of an iGPS, but we designed iGPS sonar products as well.
Again, I am not trying to say I did ALL of these units but that I had a hand in almost all and personally designed several of them. The rest were all done on my watch by a team of fine engineers.
The iWay250c and the XOG unit were ones that I worked with ODMs to produce in China. We surveyed manufacturers on location chose one and worked with talented design teams in Taiwan to produce the final design. It was my job to keep the ODMs out of trouble. Some days that is easier than others.
My expertise is in system design, hardware design, PCB layout, EMC and validation testing. I developed the original testing techniques for Lowrance, many of which are used today to validate GPS products. Along the way, others put in their ideas as well. A small team can very often produce superior results to some of the largest companies.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures. You can click on any photo to see a larger version.
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| AccuNav Sport
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Global Map 12
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Eagle Explorer
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| AirMap 100
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Original iFinder
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iFinder & Faceoff
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| Brunton Atlas
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Brunton MNS
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AirMap 500
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| iFinder Pro
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iFinder M & M
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iFinder PhD
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| iFinder Go
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iFinder Go2
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iFinder H20
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| AirMap 1000/2000c
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XOG
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iWay500c/600c
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