The Continuing Adventures of Ohm

Dec. 14, 2020

Find out about Georg Ohm from his creator, Dr. Ray Ridley, and the impetus behind the series.

These days are challenging times for many reasons, including COVID-19. We were lucky enough to have some humorous and insightful cartoons from Dr. Ray Ridley, CEO of Ridley Engineering, creators of the RidleyBox and RidleyWorks design tools. Ohm Confinement is now a regular weekly series on Electronic Design. We had a short chart with Dr. Ridley about his cartoon series.

Dr. Ray Ridley is the creator for Ohm Confinement.

Why a cartoon?

At the beginning of the COVID lockdown in March, my wife and I shuttled our work necessities to the house to set up shop. Our employees did the same. Knowing that it could be weeks or months in a home-based work environment, we adapted as quickly as possible. Memories of raising our four children while working from home in the early days (1990s) kept us laughing through the trauma. These fun memories soon evolved into a cartoon series.

How did it get started?

It started as Ohm Confinement with our main character, power electronics engineer Georg Ohm, attempting to work from home with three children (Meg, Mic, and Milli) to supervise. Meanwhile his wife, Dr. Tera Ohm, is quarantined in her hospital office. The cartoon series became Adventures of Ohm as the lockdown eased. Ohm and his family experience many triumphs and setbacks together—achievement, praise, creative mastery, unemployment, devastation, peace, and ultimately, unexpected laughter and quality time with family.

Our introduction to Ohm started here. The new scopes that you can buy have ever bigger screens, but even the best of them is no match for my notebook PC. When you’re trying to look at detailed waveforms with maybe eight traces on a screen, it becomes very difficult. We have always used the HDMI output on a scope (make sure it has one!) to put the waveforms on a monitor to share with course attendees. Recently, TV prices have plummeted, and the refresh rates are fast enough to use a TV for a computer monitor. That changed a lot of things for us. Our 28-in. screen become a 34, then a 48, 54, and finally an 80-in. monitor for our conference screen. A 55-in. monitor sits on my bench in the lab with a scope, FRA, and multiple windows for development work. It’s a real game changer. At the same time, of course, you can watch movies and your favorite sports events.

Where do you get your material from?

Much of the material is based on real experiences, whether ours or engineers we know. The growing menagerie of animals reflect the realities of the Ridley household. Although it seems like an oxymoron—Engineers and Humor—we find fellow engineers to be quite a comedic bunch. They just think differently.

ParanOHMal Activity: Engineers can be quite creative at Halloween. Ohm is no exception, coming up with a remote candy-delivery system for this year. Notice the truly scary equation above the garage.

Do you work with anyone to create the series?

My wife and business partner, Denise Ridley, who is COO of Ridley Engineering Inc., works with me as well as Aya Shaheen, a young and talented artist, who is the illustrator.