Mike Violette

Mike Violette is Director at-large with the EMC Society and supports the EMCS to IEEE’s IoT initiatives. Mike can be reached at mikev@wll.com.

From This Author

Reality Engineering

The Linoleum Press Job and the Meatball: A Cautionary Tale

When a linoleum factory's production line mysteriously shuts down after installing a new crane, EMC consultants race against time to solve the "noise problem" — only to discover the real culprit was hiding in plain sight all along.

Reality Engineering

The Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers: A Timeless Treatise

This nostalgic engineering column explores a 1933 electrical engineering handbook, revealing how timeless principles like the decibel, radio interference mitigation, and wind power generation connect past innovations to today's compliance engineering challenges—proving "everything old is new again."

Standards and Compliance

Wireless Certification in the Land of the Rising Sun

1311 F1 cover The first broadcasting station in Japan went on-air in 1925, a scant five years after the first radio station went live in the United States. A year later, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) was chartered by the Japanese government and is still the official public broadcast entity. The build-out of NHK’s network into the Pacific was extensive in the 1930s and during the early years of WWII and followed the expansion of Japan’s imperial armed forces across the Pacific.

Reality Engineering

Frying the Flight Data Recorder: How Not to Impress

When a consulting engineer accidentally destroys a critical aviation component while troubleshooting electromagnetic interference in a Flight Data Recorder system, lunch becomes awkwardly quiet. This Grand Rapids project showcases the high-stakes world of aerospace compliance testing, where one slip of a dental pick can derail schedules and test nerves.

Reality Engineering

The Ringing Rocket

Gimbals & Gimballing Ships’ compasses are mounted on gimbals, fixtures that allow the needle to...

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Columns

The Scale of Shaky Things

We examine the size of things that move and shake, from the whisper of a lover to the crunch of tectonics. Barely audible, a whisper at the threshold of human hearing produces a “zero dB” sound pressure level (SPL), according to convention.

Reality Engineering

Keep Looking

Mike Violette unravels mysterious horizontal lines plaguing hospital trauma room X-ray images. After extensive investigation, the culprit wasn't the suspected 58kHz interference but an RFID theft-detection system operating at 13.56MHz—highlighting the importance of persistence in electromagnetic troubleshooting.

Columns

Celestial Dancer Certification: Khmer a Moment

Forty thousand elephants were used in the construction of Angkor Wat, the iconic world-heritage...

Reality Engineering

A Tall Tale: What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

A team of EMC engineers investigates mysterious interference at a historic New Jersey radio station, where classic rock music inexplicably bleeds into TV broadcasts. The investigation leads them through the station's fascinating history and its maze of aging equipment.

Standards and Compliance

Certification: A Panacea for a Paranoid Society?

The growth in the electronics sector over the last 30 years has been paralleled by the growth of Certification programs developed to verify conformance with requirements.

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Mike Violette

From This Author

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What's New

Preparing for Compliance Testing: A Step‑by‑Step Guide for Engineers in Product Development and EMC/Safety Certification

U.S. Senate to Consider Bill to Require Cyber Review of Chinese-Made Medical Devices

FCC Plans Auction of Prime Mid-Band Spectrum

EMC Bench Notes: Troubleshooting with a Nearby Antenna

FDA Updates Medical Device Shortages List