Highlights from Cary Champlin’s high-tech career

Co-founder and Technical Lead at Champlin Technologies LLC. Champlin Technologies consists of a small team of specialists creating high-tech electronic products and software apps, and providing exceptional consulting services.

Developed and released Cloaked Data on the Apple App Store. Cloaked Data is a secure modern password manager that works with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. Cloaked Data protects and manages password data securely using modern strong encryption algorithms (AES-256). Cloaked Data keeps all your password data and information on your device, not a server.

Developing Thrive in Life Kit personal financial manager app (iPhone, iPad, mac, Apple Watch) with an expected release on the Apple App Store in early 2023.

Principal Electrical Engineer at (IV Lab) where I led a team conducting applied machine-learning research using convolutional neural networks (CNN) with GPU clusters to develop AI architectures specific to disease diagnosis with high sensitivity/specificity.

Established and matured a state-of-the-art R&D electronics lab to build and test innovative electronic and embedded software solutions that focus on global health issues in the developing world and open problems in high tech fields.

Pacific Standard Magazine (Aug 2017): Engineering the End of Malaria – Interview by Julian Smith

Lead systems engineer for crew capsule development at (Blue Origin) where I defined and created technical requirements, system baseline configurations, concept of operations for sub-orbital launches, launch timelines, on-board software architecture and vehicle mass properties.

The Crew Capsule, with its signature six gigantic windows, walk-in hatch, and two-fault safe design, enjoys a perfect track record of successful test flights including a time-critical pad escape test, a stressing max-Q escape test, and a recent CC2.0 maiden flight.

Electrical engineer at Motorola Space Electronics Division (now part of General Dynamics):

Engineering lead for team that designed, built, and operated a world-class I&T facility that produced 82 Iridium satellites in 34 months. Defined plans for I&T, environmental tests, testability, manufacturability, coverage and yield models.

Lead engineer for the payload electronics for the ACTS communication satellite development program with technical leadership of nearly 100 engineers and technicians. Chaired design reviews, CCB, FRB, readiness reviews and monthly reviews with customers and senior management.

Design Engineer on the APS-94F side-looking airborne radar (SLAR) project. Designed the ECCM multi-channel adaptive nulling circuits, 10 GHz frequency synthesizers, and MTI processor. Led integration, verification and flight-testing of deployed systems.

I received my PhD and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Arizona State University and my BS in electrical engineering from University of Wyoming.

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IV Lab – Autoscope

As the Autoscope project lead for 3 years, it’s great to see the team’s world-class machine-learning software, that achieves WHO Expert Level-1 diagnosis and quantitation performance for malaria microscopy, being showcased with its commercialization partner, Motic.

Global Good produced a short video highlighting the use of Autoscope as a tool for consistent world-class quality diagnosis and quantitation performance for malaria microscopy. Motic has become its commercialization partner and renamed the product: EasyScan GO.

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) were used in our machine-learning Autoscope project to achieve WHO Expert Level-1 diagnosis and quantitation performance for malaria microscopy.

Blue Origin – Crew Capsule

CC 2.0 with its gigantic windows and walk-in hatch waiting for recovery after a perfect maiden flight (2017-12-12).

It’s great to see my original architecture (gigantic windows, walk-in hatch) from my tenure as Crew Capsule chief engineer being showcased by GeekWire aerospace/science editor Alan Boyle.


Initial prototype sub-orbital crew capsule sized for 6 astronauts. Note the 6 large windows and easy walk-in access hatch. The panels for the 3 drogue chutes and larger panels for the 3 main parachutes can be seen on the top-view image of the Crew Capsule.

Although I have moved on in my career, it’s great to see my work as chief engineer for the Crew Capsule result in a massively successful Crew Capsule escape test at max-Q.


Sub-orbital crew capsule descending under 3 parachutes after successful flight at the Blue Origin launch and test facility in west Texas.

Launch of Blue Origin’s sub-orbital rocket and Crew Capsule at the beginning of its escape test at max-Q. An escape test at max-Q is just one of the flight tests to prove full-envelope escape capability for the Crew Capsule.

The maiden flight of Blue Origin’s sub-orbital crew capsule was perfect in every metric. The Crew Capsule has enjoyed a perfect suite of flight tests.

It’s amazingly satisfying to see CC 2.0 with its gigantic windows, walk-in hatch, and ‘two-fault safe’ design enjoy an absolutely perfect maiden flight (2017-12-12).


View of the Crew Capsule at Blue Origin highlighting the size of its windows and walk-in hatch compared to a human.

Motorola – Iridium Satellites


Actual Iridium satellite hanging in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.


Another Iridium satellite is ready to ship. On the first several satellites, the small triangular cover plate on the near-end of the satellite was laser-etched with the names of people who worked on the project!


Iridium satellite hanging in a thermal chamber for initial thermal cycle testing. RF hats are used on the Main Mission Antenna panels to prevent RF receiver overload.


Comm Panel containing most of the baseband on-board communications electronics mounted to an Iridium satellite frame.


Shipping container for an Iridium satellite with temperature/humidity control and vibe/shock protection. Destinations included Vandenberg AFB (US), Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (China), Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan Russia).


Fully-assembled satellite being rolled into a thermal chamber for final thermal testing. Solar panels have protective covers at this point.


Testing the Iridium satellite RF interfaces: 4 Gateway Antennas (silver cables), 4 Crosslink Antenna (silver cables), 3 Main Mission Antenna arrays (blue cables), and a coat-rack for test cable support.


On-board Computer – Main processor module (1 of 7 on each Iridium satellite). If you look closely, the main CPU was an XPC603A (beta version of the PPC603A).

Motorola – Radar


X-band ECCM Side-Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR) phased array antenna (length 20 ft, width 1.5 ft, height 1.5 ft) is mounted on the underside of the OV1-D Mohawk turbo-prop plane.


ECCM module (4-channel adaptive null steering) from X-Band Radar.


High-power VCO circuit from X-Band frequency synthesizer (9.1 to 10.0 GHz in 5 MHz steps).


X-band ECCM Radar transmitter/receiver and signal processor boxes are installed into the fuselage of the OV1-D Mohawk turbo-prop plane.


VCO and pin diode frequency multiplier circuits from X-Band frequency synthesizer (9.1 to 10.0 GHz in 5 MHz steps).


‘Divide-by-N’ board from X-Band frequency synthesizer (9.1 to 10.0 GHz in 5 MHz steps).