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Projects that don't bill anybody. Most of them have a sensor on them anyway.
Each one of these started as a problem I wanted to solve and turned into a thing I now maintain. Status tags are mostly accurate.
A Proxmox box full of VMs named after planets (Mercury runs Plex, Neptune serves this page), a UniFi network I'm slowly segmenting the right way, and a Home Assistant install that runs the house. Current build: a Raspberry Pi touchscreen wall panel for the kitchen.
A recirculating tower on the screen porch growing tomatoes, strawberries, and zucchini. The pump runs on a duty cycle from Home Assistant, and I've been losing a polite fight with an 80°F reservoir all summer. Outside: watermelons, with mixed results.
A Bambu P2S and an Artillery Sidewinder X1, printing in PLA, TPU, and a flexible PEBA for airless basketballs. During the pandemic I ran the printers around the clock making face shields for local healthcare workers (ColaDaily wrote it up). In progress now: a mini projector turned into a ceiling star map with live ISS and aircraft overlays.
Three in the hangar: an FPV quad, the original "Research Drone" (an old S500 frame with a Pixhawk), and a Cube Orange hexacopter with RTK GPS and a camera that can lift about 10 lbs and carry it several miles at 20 mph. I've never fully tested that last part, because it seemed like a bad idea for an amateur. I fly them for aerial mapping with OpenDroneMap, and building them is at least half the fun.
Yes, inside the SCADA software. Mars Water Reclamation (keep the tank between 20 and 80 percent on a solar bus that can't run all three pumps), a PID loop tuner, and a few others. Built for conference booths, and because it's cool.
I've been smoking meat for years. The current rig is a cheap pellet grill I Frankensteined together with low cost parts and a PID controller running the auger and fan, so the pit holds temperature the same way a chemical feed loop does. Yes, I tuned it.
I play guitar and keyboard and make music in FL Studio when nobody's asking me to fix anything, I'm a Level 30 on Duolingo learning French, and my wife and I play pickleball in the neighborhood. We have two big dogs, Koda and Quba, who supervise all of the above.
In elementary school my answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up" was astronaut, and specifically one of the first people to set foot on Mars. That stuck with me long enough to force myself through calculus and electromagnetics, at which point I decided I'd be fine here on Earth. The space nerd part never left, which explains the Mars theme on everything. I was a guest on VTScada's Automation Village podcast (Season 2, Episode 6) and played their lunar lander game, built inside VTScada, for a high score of 37,048.
If you run a water or wastewater plant and your HMI is older than your newest operator, I'd like to hear about it. Same if you want to talk hydroponics, VTScada, or how to get a Proxmox VM to stop doing the thing.
Based in Columbia, SC. ICS Automated's office is in Greenville.