EIDA Member Feature – Don Alan Pty Ltd

The business was started in 1992 by 23 year old Donald Kay during “the recession we had to have”. He had been running the contract engineering section at a small company that designed and built microprocessor based logging and process control equipment when that was a booming industry. 

He noted that it was hard back at the start to have a strategy beyond making enough to get by. Computer monitor screen repair and adjustment work was seen as a cash cow that would keep the business running while developing a customer base for the more interesting design and manufacture work.  

Computer monitors back in those days had cathode ray display tubes with 35,000V power supplies that most computer technicians did not want to go near – either through frustration of not being able to repair the units or this risk of getting zapped. The dust in the high voltage circuits even made them smell dangerous.  

That was good for this startup business. It only took one person in a CAD room to call to get their monitor adjusted for colour and straightness – The techs would reach into the back amongst the high voltage circuits twiddling the 6 magnets and carefully positioning mu-metal strips under the deflection yoke to get colour perfect, ruler straight images (the kind you get out of the box with every LCD monitor today) and this was infectious.  The other drafters would look on in envy and they would end up adjusting every screen in the office.  During this time the business built up a customer base of engineering and manufacturing work.

One of the early ‘volume’ customers was the Adelaide Casino.  All their new gaming machines had arrived in time for their official opening but the drink call buttons on the machines only lit the attendant call light while the button was held down. Management wanted the light to remain on until the staff attended to the punter, so the casino would not lose their drink sale and the punter would not snap out of their trance and leave the machine.  

Opening night for the gaming rooms was only a couple of weeks away, with no time to get the correct switches from the machine manufacturer. So, hundreds of new modules were quickly designed, built and retrofitted to each machine to make the switches operate correctly. 

Initially the business operated out of the parental garage – à la Hewlett Packard!  Founder Note: “It is hoped that we all can be as accommodating to our kids entrepreneurial activities as were my parents”. Later an area for manufacturing was leased in the back office of a local shopping centre. 

The repair side of the business was eventually sold to concentrate on the more interesting design and manufacturing business.  As the business grew, more space for the office, design and manufacturing was leased on Burbridge Road (Now Sir Donald Bradman Drive). Then In 2008 the company moved to the current and much larger facility at Bacon St Hindmarsh.

Projects that illustrate the company’s range of capability:

* Do the mirrors on your car fold back for parking?  Chances are they have Don Alan electronics in them.  As these mirrors became more popular a local auto manufacturer (now SMR) developed a plastic mechanism with Applidyne, another Adelaide company.  The plastic saved a lot of money compared to the metal machine parts in use at the time and improved pedestrian safety but they needed electronics that could ensure the motors shut off gracefully at the end of travel. There were IC’s available to do this but they were expensive and not very robust.  A first principles approach to the challenge led to a patented circuit arrangement of low cost components that has now been in production for many years.

* During a major shipbuilding project in Adelaide the need arose for Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) for the on-board electronics.  When you build a ship the design is not normally finished before construction starts and the electronic systems are usually the last to be installed in the ship – so they end up with whatever is left over. This task imposed incredibly tight space requirements and power efficiency targets. Lithium batteries were the obvious choice to meet the size requirement but this was before the ‘explosion’ of grid connected batteries and large lithium systems which were then quite new. At the time the Boeing 787 fleet had been grounded due to lithium batteries catching fire.  Lithium batteries could be used for this marine application, if they were not the same type as used on 787’s. A discovery tour through the global battery manufacturers found a new type of cell called LiFePO4. Using these batteries the UPS units were designed and built in Adelaide, installed on several ocean going ships and these systems remain in service today.

* A customer came to the Don Alan office and explained their idea for cricket bails that light up when clear of the stumps. The ‘can do’ principle applies here – if the customer wants flashing lights this can be provided. 

Don Alan had no understanding of how impactful the product would be. The company expertise is very much in electronics and not cricket!  This was a challenging task, a cricket bail is not very big and not very heavy and the stadiums are big places and a lot of light is required to make the dislodged flashing bails visible.  The first spin of the design was used in a game in Australia 2012 and even the US newspapers covered it – along with a brief tutorial on the game of cricket.

Some non-Don Alan activities:   

* The Electronics Industry had been trying to get a trade delegation together to China.  In 2007 then Trade Minister Paul Caica became available and a group including Greg Bassini (CEO of EIA) and Anthony Kittel (CEO of REDARC Electronics)  and Donald Kay of Don Alan headed to Qingdao which is a sister city to Adelaide. Donald had arranged some meetings with Shanghai transport to see if he could interest them in their experience with tollway tags. Don Alan was among the first handful of companies to make compliant tollway tags. “I kept in touch with Peipei, my translator for this section of the trip and in 2008 we married and now have a 12 year old daughter.  

My daughter seems much more interested in flying than engineering.”

* In 2015 a group of founding members established EIDA and Donald Kay, Don Alan Pty Ltd Managing Director was elected its chair person, a position that he holds today. 

* Donald Kay was introduced to the World Electronics Forum (WEF) which is a group of electronics industry associations around the world. Donald Kay attended many of these annual meetings to promote the merits of the Australian and South Australian electronics industry. In January 2019 at CES in Las Vegas, EIDA pitched successfully to host the 2019 WEF in Adelaide, which was held in December 2019 at the Adelaide Convention Centre. The event was officially opened on the 4^th of December 2019 by the Premier of South Australia, The Hon Steven Marshall MP. 

* In 2001, Donald Kay got together with some people outside of work who also liked bush walking and they trained for the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker.  “We were walking quite a bit anyway so this helped give us a bit of structure and a goal”. The team has to pass through each checkpoint together over the 100km walk. It was hard for each walker, but at different points – this is where keeping together as a team was perhaps as challenging as the physical demands of the walk.  When preparing for the 100km walk the most the team members had done in a single walk was about 40km. One of the group was based in Renmark and they were learning that actually their prowess at running did not make up for the terrain and distance of this walk. DA “I remember lying on my back just across the finish line absorbing the welcome cool of the damp ground through my back waiting for the inevitable cramps in my legs”.  The team adopted the name ‘World Wide Walkers’ (WWW).

Founder’s comment: 

“ I am passionate about the electronics industry in Adelaide.  My father was an engineer for 40 years with Philips at Hendon.  I guess it is in the family.”