Practical notes on robotics, embedded systems, AI and building software people can trust.
Electronics / embedded systems / instrumentation · 10 min read
A detailed design study of the ESP32-S3 controller, its power and protocol boundaries, and a radar-based positioning extension that preserves the existing PCB.
Read article: Inside the Gendio control board: power, protocols and radar positioningRobotics / mechatronics / design study · 13 min read
CAD, traction and energy calculations, conservative coverage planning and an experimental roadmap for a modular dry-cleaning crawler.
Read article: Designing a waterless solar-panel cleaning robotEngineering case study · 3 min read
How I organised sensing, estimation, planning and control for a differential-drive rover, and what simulation could establish.
Read article: Building a ROS 2 navigation stack I could investigateEngineering case study · 3 min read
Integrating Hall-effect sensing, embedded acquisition, Bluetooth and MATLAB into a movement-assessment prototype.
Read article: From movement to measurement: my ESP32 honours capstoneEngineering case study · 3 min read
A local-first pricing workflow with deterministic matching, exact money handling and an operator-reviewed ServiceM8 export.
Read article: Making catalogue repricing reviewable at SWLEngineering case study · 3 min read
An ESP32-S3 display-controller design connecting serial parsing, guarded display output, a four-layer PCB and browser configuration.
Read article: Designing the Gendio controller around explicit statesWhat a product reveals about its design when someone needs to open it, find a part and put it back into service.
Read article: The second life of a productA small control raises a larger design question: how much attention should an everyday adjustment demand?
Read article: In praise of the volume knobSensing and signal processing · 4 min read
How an 80 Hz signal becomes indistinguishable from 20 Hz when sampled at 100 samples per second, and what to check before trusting a trend.
Read article: A smooth sensor trace can hide real motionApplied machine learning · 4 min read
A worked inspection example showing why defect recall, false rejects and review workload belong beside the headline accuracy score.
Read article: 99% accuracy can still miss every defectEngineering and work · 7 min read
Years in a role can tell us something. They cannot tell us everything. A case for assessing capability, supporting graduates and rewarding people who keep learning.
Read article: The experience trap: when hiring protects the pastMachine vision · 5 min read
A worked example of field of view, exposure and motion blur, and how to tell whether an inspection image contains enough evidence.
Read article: Before training the model, do the camera mathsSystems engineering · 5 min read
What Little's Law and a simple queue model reveal about work in progress, waiting time and where automation can actually help.
Read article: The hidden cost of keeping every machine busyIndustrial data · 4 min read
Separating connection health, measurement age and validity in an MQTT dashboard, with a practical stale-data test.
Read article: A connected sensor can still be giving you old dataRobotics · 4 min read
A focused way to diagnose ROS 2 QoS mismatches, separate discovery from delivery, and test the actual subscriber.
Read article: A ROS 2 topic can exist and still deliver nothingRobotics · 4 min read
A practical way to separate coordinate-frame, timing and localisation faults before changing a navigation controller.
Read article: Before tuning a robot, check what it thinks is movingEmbedded systems · 4 min read
How hysteresis, debounce and explicit states turn a fluctuating measurement into a useful event without hiding the timing cost.
Read article: A noisy sensor needs a decision ruleAI and software · 4 min read
A practical design for checking retrieval, source quality and permission boundaries in an assistant that runs on your own hardware.
Read article: Local AI: the model is one part of the systemEngineering software · 4 min read
Preserving identifiers, resolving ambiguity and making an import reviewable before it changes an operational system.
Read article: The hard part of a CSV import is deciding what may changeProduct engineering · 4 min read
Why offline use, saved data, export and recovery need separate acceptance tests in a small personal or business app.
Read article: A local app needs a way backAutomation · 4 min read
Designing retries, operation records and human review for the uncertain gap between sending a request and seeing its result.
Read article: When an automation times out, did the action happen?A plain-English guide to trying AI, protecting your information and checking the answers.
Read article: AI without the jargon: a practical starting point