Mr. Kern acted as system architect for the Arbitron Ratings Company of Control Data Corporation in producing it's next generation audience monitoring system. Although this system was never deployed in production (due to Arbitron's exit from the national TV market) this work produced 2 patents, several circuit board designs and several large bits of assembley language source code.
Mr. Kern was the architect of the central store and forward router for homes called the "hub", and produced its 80c188 battery powered processor board.
Mr. Kern produced the modem board for the hub, designed to hang up and disconnect when a family member used the phone, which would sabve Arbitron about $2M per year in seperate phone lines otherwise required at the time. This work was patented by CDC.
Mr. Kern produced the network protocols and communications protocols for gathering TV audience viewing data. This work was patented by CDC.
Mr. Kern produced the first of a line of Z80 based controller boards for controlling audience measurement equipment- modified cable converters and such- and interfacing these to the network.
Mr. Kern worked with one other architect to design the nationwide reporting protocols for these in-home audience monitoring systems to report back to Arbitron.
Mr. Kern produced assembly language software to modify legacy monitoring equipment and upgrade it, and for the new controllers test routines. This included Z80, 8080, 8048, 8052 and 80188 assembler work, and in circuit emulation equipment with logic analyzers. It also included the use of protocol analyzers.
The system was designed to be installed in 22,000 homes across the USA for initial trials. The company faced marketing setbacks versus the #1 ratings company for the national TV market and de-funded the project before deployment but after it had begun testing.
"If you do anything long enough, you eventually get good at it." MK