Stephan Wegerich proudly refers to himself as a “double-E”–an electrical engineer. He also proudly serves as his company’s–and household’s–resident technology buff.
Wegerich is the chief scientist at SmartSignal Corp., a software company in Lisle that diagnoses potential mechanical failures in rail and jet engines before they occur. He wrote the algorithms to monitor engine performance on more than 500 Delta Air Lines planes during flight.
Sensors tracking engine performance areas like shaft speed, fuel flow and exhaust gas temperature send data via satellite to SmartSignal’s computer system, which compares the statistics to those that a “normal” engine should present. Any red flags are fed to a Web-based reporting system accessed by Delta.
“We feed those sensor values through our diagnostic engine, which compares them to our estimates and diagnoses problems,” he said.
Wegerich was recently involved in a less critical but equally rewarding tech task: converting 59 years of video from his mother-in-law’s life onto a DVD. He and his wife, Julie, completed the moviemaking project for his mother-in-law’s 60th birthday.
“We had Christmas video of Julie’s mom from the time she was 1 year old,” Wegerich said. “And it was that old reel-to-reel, frame-by-frame film.”
That was converted to VHS, which was imported into Wegerich’s computer.
Before beginning the project, Wegerich’s Windows 2000-based PC was equipped with a 200 gigabyte internal hard drive to store all those years of video and the Pinnacle Studio Deluxe version 8 video-editing system.
That hardware/software package allowed Wegerich and his wife to import analog VHS footage through audio-video jacks onto the computer’s hard drive, where it was edited and dubbed with music.
“We also videotaped still images and brought those into the video,” he said.
The final footage was cut into chapters like “The Christmases” and “Mom and Dad,” and burned onto two DVDs. The second disc included behind-the-scenes footage covering the creation of the product.
Did the monthslong effort end up being worthwhile?
“Oh yeah,” Wegerich said. “She loved them.”
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