Born: 1982
 Occupation: Sr. Electronic Engineer
 Interest: Programming, Electronics, and Mechanical Engineering
 Skills: Soldering, Basic Electronics and Microcontrollers, SolidWorks 3D Design, OOP 

David Powell was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland where he attended Eastern Technical High School, majoring in Construction Technology. This included courses in Carpentry, HVAC, Plumbing, Drafting, Welding and his favorite of all, Electrical. Although David enjoyed the construction fields it was during high school that he found a new passion for computer programming.

Interested in learning more about programming he started searching for colleges. He took his first programming course at Essex Community College in his 12th grade year. Later a recruiter from TESST College of Technology convinced him that he would be happier in a field of electronics because of his love for “tinkering.”  The recruiter was correct! David enjoyed earning his Associates of Applied Science (A.A.S) Degree in the major of Electronics, Computers, and Telecommunications.

While at TESST David worked part time at Baynesville Electronics in Towson, MD where he became familiar with a wide variety of electronic components, connectors, and tools.

After graduation from TESST he quickly landed a job with Jacobs Technologies at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. David spent the first 3 years of his career doing Shock and Vibration testing. Here he gained extensive knowledge of transducers and data aquisition as well as a limited amount of mechanical engineering. David spent the last 4 years of his career with Jacobs in ballistics testing where he operated a doplar radar and was tasked with maintaining data aquisition equipment.

Shortly after starting with Jacobs David purchased his first home. Of course he could not have a normal home. So David got into yet another hobby, Home Automation. After many long nights of research he started his automation hobby by installing a Z-Wave Lighting control system in his home. Z-Wave was very new at that time so it was a bit of a gamble. Technologies like Z-Wave come and go all the time. After become a guru with Z-Wave products he met several key players in the developement of Z-Wave. One of which offered him a part time freelance position writing review articles for www.zwaveworld.com.

In late 2008 David attended the HacDC RepRap Build-A-Thon which was a 2 day event set to build a single RepRap machine. While at HacDC David became familiar with the concept of a Hackerspace. Shortly after the event he set out to start a Hackerspace in  his current town of Harford County, hense the January 1st 2009 birth of Harford Hackerspace.

Harford Hackerspace grew quickly in its first year. One of the members of Harford Hackerspace offered David an Electronic Engineering Position at Lockheed Martin where he now works.

SUMMARY

Education: A.A.S TESTT College of Technology,
                 Currently taking courses U.M.U.C.

Work History:  Baynesville Electronics
                       Aberdeen Proving Grounds
                       Z-Wave World
                       Lockheed Martin (Current)

Skills: Electronics
          Soldering
          Programming (C#, PHP, HTML, Java, JavaScript, C for Microcontrollers)
          Mechanical (Changing Brakes, Oil, Tires, Ect.)
          Machining (CNC, Tablesaws, Drill Press, Ect.)