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Welcome

My name is Chris and I'm a software developer with experience spanning SDK development, firmware engineering, QA automation, and some DevOps thrown in there for good measure. This page outlines my experience as well as my professional and personal projects, so please have a look around.

  • Software Development

    Without trying to sound too meditative, my approach to software development is one of balance, for example the balance between complexity and maintainability or between optimization and reusability. I think this leads to software of enduring value and is always a goal for which I strive.

  • Firmware Development

    There is something fulfilling about squeezing every bit of performance from challenging environments, and for me, firmware development provides that satisfaction. It's thrilling to overcome hardware limitations and see the tangible results as a system comes to life.

  • Test Automation

    Another avenue I've found to scratch that efficiency itch is in test automation. Not only does it free up manual testing bandwidth to solve larger challenges, but can also test deeper and further than would be otherwise feasible. The rapid feedback and iteration that this enables can be transformative and I love being a part of that.

  • DevOps

    Given the aforementioned, it makes sense that I would enjoy expanding into DevOps as well, since it can make a similar impact across the entire build, test, and release workflow. The integration of diverse tools and technologies ensures there is always something new and exciting to master. Knowing its integral importance to a project, the rewarding feeling of crafting a speedy and reliable CI pipeline is hard to match.

Selected Projects

UAV
During the development of a consumer-grade unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a tight feedback loop was necessary for firmware engineers to rapidly verify changes. This was made possible by automating hardware-in-the-loop (HIL/HITL) testing against a virtual 3D environment (jMAVSim). To integrate into the existing automation framework, control messages were automatically parsed from C source files and regenerated in Ruby.

Categories: Automation

Used: C, Ruby, minitest, USB, UART, HIL

Tablet
Automation was heavily leveraged as part of verifying the Wi-Fi subsystem integration of one of the first highly-affordable families of consumer tablets. Compatibility tests with popular access points were scripted via Selenium and on-device stress tests found rare-but-critical bugs. In this way, both test coverage and depth were expanded without increasing test cycle durations.

Categories: Automation

Used: Android, ADB, Python, Selenium, Robotium

Headphone
Similar to previous projects, test automation was used to provide fast feedback about firmware builds for a pair of premium headphones. In addition, long-running battery drain and charging tests were automated to obviate the need for manual intervention. This allowed for more data points to be captured and gave a clearer picture of performance.
During development of the follow-on product (you guessed it, more headphones), capacitive touch noise issues were encountered. Through collaborative efforts with the EE team, the issue was isolated to chip-internal noise on certain pins and by rerouting those pins to non-touch functionality, costly changes were avoided.

Categories: Automation, Firmware

Used: Python, ADB, C, I2C, Lab Equipment (Multimeters, Protocol Analyzers, etc.)

Audio SDK
A professional audio encoder SDK product written in C/C++ had become increasingly difficult to maintain due to the number and complexity of manual steps involved in building, testing and releasing it. The solution was an overhaul to a modern development workflow (modified Gitflow), build tools (CMake, Conan), and CI pipelines (GitLab). The final cutover had to be carefully coordinated among multiple teams that shared portions of the codebase, but once complete resulted in a greatly accelerated and simplified CI/CD process.

Categories: Software, DevOps

Used: CMake, Conan, Git, GitLab, Python, Docker, VMWare, Ansible, AWS, Artifactory

Just for Fun

Personal projects to explore programming languages, platforms, technologies, etc.

Peg Game

Peg Game

A classic brain teaser that involves arranging 15 golf tees (or pegs) in an equilateral triangle on a board. One peg is then removed creating an available hole. The goal is to jump over each peg with another peg, removing the jumped-over peg, until only one remains. It is recreated here for the Apple Watch.

Uses: Swift, SwiftUI, watchOS, XCTest, XCUITest

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Peg Game Solver

Peg Game Solver

Having trouble with the Peg game above? In addition to the many solutions published on the internet, this program will solve game boards with 4, 5, or 6 rows. Both Python and C versions are provided.

Uses: C, CMake, Python

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Jump To The Recipe

Jump To The Recipe

A 100% text-based recipe website that eschews long descriptions, stories, images, ads, and any other bloat the comes between the recipe and the cook. It is designed to display pleasantly on screen sizes from mobile phones to desktop monitors. Currently under-development and not yet published.

Uses: Python, Flask, Jinja2, SQLAlchemy, SQLite, Bootstrap CSS

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This Website

This Website

This website is generated and served via GitHub Pages and customized using Jekyll, a static site generator. By utilizing the Liquid template language, formatting and content can be updated easily and independently. The frontend is powered by Bootstrap CSS and extended with Material Design for Bootstrap (MDB) and the Animate-on-scroll (AOS) library.

Uses: GitHub, Jekyll, Liquid, Bootstrap, MDB, AOS

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