Origin Story

I come from a long line of Florists. Charvat the Florist was established in 1893 and is one of the oldest continuously running private businesses in the state of Michigan.

'Small business, big history.' Grosse Pointe News, March 29, 2018

First location of Charvat the Florist, founded in 1893 in Detroit MI

Second location of Charvat the Florist, new building constructed in Dec. of 1915 in Detroit MI

Current location of Charvat the Florist, new building in 1950, on Mack Ave in Grosse Pointe Farms MI (just across the street from Detroit)

Party, sometime in the mid-century at the Grosse Pointe location

Two generations in one image from 2002.

Display at thhe museum in Detroit.

My grandfathers both served in WW2;

This is known as a Ground Approach RADAR station, allowing aircraft to land in poor conditions by direct RADAR measurement.

went on to have huge middle class families;

saved enough money to buy modest boats;

Into this I was born with an early and keen interest in electronics & science;

Grabbing onto anything science related, including my mother's textbooks.

I would pick TV sets out of the trash and take them apart. Getting a discarded TV or radio was better than Christmas!

Lab when i was about 10 years old, with an old GM Delco car radio connected to an electric train transformer to power it.

Of course I had an Apple 2

Examples of some of the stuff i built from age 10-14;

Rocket launcher.

Alarm system with motion sensors.

Transistor tester, was using alot of transistors after a while.

Audio amplifier board and a few other things.

Repairing the depth finder on my grandfather's boat while in middle school.

I was a member of the electric car team in 8th grade, we made this solar-powered EV that could go over 25 MPH.

2m Amateur Radio from the North Channel, amazing how far we were able to go with the 3 watts on the HT with rubber duck antenna.

Things got serious when i found some focus, amateur radio, hamfests, & our high school's radio astronomy club which was run by an absolutely wonderful teacher who just wanted to share the interst of astrophysics and radio astronomy with the students. This kicked off a lifelong interst in imaging with non-optical wavelengths.

Working on the radio telescope in high school.

Workshop from about age 17 or 18.

Giving a talk at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial on my summer internship after my Junior year of high school, working at a small defense contractor in Ohio.

Showing my grandmother a comb generator that I had made for the radio telescope.

Tihs work gained the attention of the local newspaper, Pointer of Interest, Dec. 4, 1997.

Image of the antenna for the radio telescope, on the roof of our school!

Radio telescope receiver I made for ISEF

exhibit for the radio telescope receiver at the Detroit Science and Engineering Fair 1997

exhibit for the radio telescope receiver at ISEF 1997

During this time we also had fun, organizing, setting up and playing in one of the very first documented LAN parties (see our write-up in the book, Lan Party);

1996-1998 my friends and I used to throw LAN parties before they were called LAN parties, please see our write-up in the book, Lan Party.

the countdown timer, made from an IBM XT running BASIC with two monitors, one displaying the countdown for each half of my parents house where we setup the Lan party

1996-1998 my friends and I used to throw LAN parties before they were called LAN parties (see our write-up in the book, Lan Party).

The lab in the basement at my parents house got serious as well, nothing but the best 1950's and 1960's equipment that I could buy cheaply at hamfests;

Repair the ham radio club's repeater, which was made from surplus Motorola Micore radio equipment.

In the basement lab senior year of high school.

Ask capabilities increased so did the amateur radio station, shown here loaded with repaired vintage equipment at around senior year of high school;

more military surplus radio gear

Really liked military surplus radio gear, and still do!

The basemeent lab at my parents house was put to good use in undergrad, where I completed the HF radar, the 'Frankenstein' vacuum tube home theater system, the portable tube pre-amplifier, and the L-band impulse radar senior capstone project;

Showing the HF radar receiver my sophmore year of undergrad.

Vacuum Tube Home theater system (Frankenstein) completed and installed into my dorm room in August of my Senior year of undergrad.

Main amplifier from the Tube Home Theater project.

Impulse radar, senior capstone project.

my dad and I in the basement lab during the winter of my senior year of undergrad, where I was completing the impuulse radar senior capstone proejct.

The basement lab is also where i build my MSEE thesis radar, the 'Unique Approach to FMCW Radar'

Acquiring measurements on my first SAR imaging system which became my MSEE thesis. This was the basis of the MIT Coffee Can Cadar course

MSEE defense completed!

Upon completing my MSEE I bought a house where I setup a serious microwave lab & machine shop equipped with the latest 1950's and 1960's microwave equipment and a 1960's Bridgeport vertical mill. The first thing I built in this lab was the backyard rail SAR.

My first project at this lab was to build a high resolution X-band rail SAR. Here are the first range profile experiments to test functionality.

backyard SAR test range

The work begins on my PhD thesis, which consisted of three different radar imaging systems sharing the same back-end.

The useful thing about owning a house rather than renting was that I could build the concrete wall on-site needed to image through with my PhD thesis radar systems.

The phased array is coming together. It is an S-band MIMO array (at the time it would have been called a switched antenna array, now we call it MIMO).

Upon completion of my PhD I joined MIT Lincoln Laboratory as a member of the Technical Staff and moved my laboratory to the east coast across various rental houses in the metro Boston area. First I setup a small quasi-workshop in my flat in Sommerville. I took a break from the hobby to focus on leanring how to Lindy Hop;

Then my fiance and I rented a house in Needham with a basement, where I learned how to repair vacuum tube radio equipment, built the portable amateur radio station, and tuned-up the vacuum tube power amplifiers;

Finally, we settled into a nice rental house in Waltham for a couple of years, where I built the 20m SSB transceiver, the MIT Coffee Can radar course, and the ARRL Homebrew Challenge III 6 & 10m transceiver. This lab is also where I learned watch & clock repair;

We then moved to the coast of CT to join Butterfly Network Inc., where i re-established the lab in a rental house. It was here where I setup my radar systems from grad school again to demonstrate and document them for my book, Small and Short-Range Radar Systems.

It was at about this time that I was interviewed by Audio Express Magazine; 'Q&A: Gregory Charvat - Early Curiosity Leads to a Lifelong Engineering Pursuit.' Audio Express Magazine, Oct. 16, 2013.

We later bought a house where I moved the lab to the garage, giving easy access to outdoor radar testing in the driveway.

It was at about this time I wrote this piece for Hackaday on the topic of 'How To Be The Hardware Engineer At A Startup.' Hackaday, Dec. 7, 2015.

With a recent technical success at Humatics I was interviewed by the Microwave Journal, 'Executive Interview: Greg Charvat, Humatics CTO.' Microwave Journal, Aug. 14, 2018.

Only two years later during COVID, this garage lab became indispensable to completing chip bringup and product release;

all the material and equipment necessary for D-band transciever testing dropped off in time for chip bringup

notes of encouragement were passed between us as we shipped material around

heavily utilized the outdoor test range

tested even in the rain, couldn't stop the progress

Post-COVID, I moved the lab from the garage to the basement where it resides today where we are writing theh next chapter;