Projects

In addition to exploring technology in my job role, I enjoy working on technical projects in my personal time.

Homelab

Over the past few years I've built and continue to grow and maintain a homelab, both to develop my technical skills and experience, and to serve personal needs. I’ve been able to gain experience with networking, virtualization, various operating systems, as well as general best practices in security and recovery. My lab was originally built with a VMWare hypervisor running on a custom white-box server, in conjuction with an isolated backup server. The hypervisor hosted mainly Debian virtual machines, including a NAS, various media servers, web servers, monitoring, and a reverse proxy and VPN server used in conjuction with a hosted VPS for secure remote access. I recently upgraded my network hardware, allowing me to build out a segmented network.

Due to VMWare’s recent changes to licensing policy, I have migrated to a Proxmox hypervisor. I have also taken this opportunity to migrate services to Docker, migrate NAS storage to ZFS, and upgrade networking and computer hardware that will allow me to build out a more mature security monitoring stack.

A recent move has additionally allowed me to dive into the world of home automation and security, in both software and hardware. This is very much a work in progress, but my next large goal is to incorporate a locally-run LLM to allow secure and private conversational interaction with home automation and the various applications running in my homelab.

LDR Frame

During an recent period of long distance with my partner, I developed a "LDR Frame" (LDR for Long Distance Relationship, phonetically "letter frame"). LDR Frame is a device that allows me to display notes to my partner on an e-ink display housed in a picture frame. The LDR Frame is powered by a Raspberry Pi, allowing for low power usage and Wi-Fi connection. I additionally developed a simple iOS app to send “letters” from my phone to the frame using Amazon SQS, allowing me to easily send notes from wherever I am in the world.

Spooky Skeleton

This past Halloween, I played with computer vision in OpenCV to build a motion-tracking skeleton. Inspired by this project from Curious Inventor, I motorized a skeleton’s head with a servo and camera powered by a Raspberry Pi running a Python script to process the camera feed and translate detected motion to allow the skeleton “watch” trick-or-treaters, and other passers-by.

3D Modeling and Printing

With the increased accessibility of quality 3D printing, and a recent move that has allowed me more space for projects, I’ve recently started 3D printing and learning 3D modeling. Using Fusion360, I’ve been able to design and print custom functional parts for computer hardware, household needs and some automotive applications.