Pulse-Eight (UK) — MatrixOS firmware lead across the OneIP, neo and ProAmp8 product lines
2011 – present · Primary firmware author across multiple product generations
Primary author of MatrixOS, the firmware OS across Pulse-Eight's smart-product range.
Video: the OneIP AV-over-IP family, the neo HDBaseT / HDMI matrix line, HDMI extenders, endpoints and splitters.
Audio: ProAmp8 matrix amplifier, audio extenders and DACs.
PC peripheral: the HDMI-CEC adapter family, small USB devices that bring HDMI-CEC to a PC.
Co-developed the original PulseBox in 2011, alongside the Nyxboard and the HDMI-CEC adapter as Pulse-Eight's first small products. The video-matrix line started with the Modular 4x4, evolved through the neo range, and arrived at today's OneIP AV-over-IP generation.
End-to-end ownership across the full system, not just the firmware: bootloader and networking, on-device web frontend and HTTP API, libCEC C port, EDID handling, the custom UDP control protocol that lets units coordinate with each other and with backend control systems, cloud-service integration, plus build / release / CI / automated-test infrastructure across multiple product generations.
On OneIP specifically: firmware on a board full of ICs is one part; the harder part is hiding the complexity. To the integrator and end-user, OneIP behaves like a single-box video matrix: pick a source, route to one or more displays, done.
Underneath sit physically separate transceivers, switch-fabric topology, multicast group state, per-stream HDCP, per-endpoint EDID and cloud-side coordination, all hidden behind the firmware, the on-device frontend and the cloud integration. Designing that "feels like one matrix" UX across many endpoints is often a larger problem than the firmware itself.
On the audio side: the ProAmp8 is an eight-zone matrix amplifier, and I am currently writing the firmware for its next generation. That work runs deep into the audio signal path: bringing up the ProASIC3 FPGA audio crosspoint over SPI, master-mode clock distribution for the TI PCM1864 ADC and PCM5242 DAC, the multi-channel TDM / I2S audio buses, the on-board audio DSP, and the S/PDIF and HDMI-ARC return paths. Multi-zone matrix audio is its own discipline next to the video work, with clocking and signal-integrity constraints that punish shortcuts.
End-buyer audience: ProAV integrators in the CEDIA channel — Crestron / Q-SYS / Control4 / AMX dealers and custom installers.
The product range is shown internationally at the major ProAV trade shows. The European one is ISE (Integrated Systems Europe); the US equivalent is InfoComm. I attended ISE personally for several years during its Amsterdam era, on hand as the engineering resource. When sales had a prospect with a technical question they couldn't field, I stepped in. I also walked the show floor with Pulse-Eight leadership to scout technologies; one of those scouting visits started a vendor conversation that became the foundational technology of the OneIP line.
libCEC — HDMI-CEC library powering Kodi and the open-source media ecosystem
2011 – present · Author + maintainer
Original author and lead maintainer of libCEC, the de-facto open-source HDMI-CEC library. Powers HDMI-CEC bus access on commodity hardware in Kodi, LibreELEC, OSMC, RetroPie and a long tail of integrator tooling, and is packaged in virtually every Linux distribution. Also used by ProAV integrators worldwide. The same authorship surface produced core architecture in Kodi mainline: the peripherals subsystem and the multi-year PVR integration. See the Open Source page for that work in detail.
Office reference install + electronics workbench (capability)
Ongoing · Real-world test bed and bench for product firmware & hardware
My office runs a production-grade Pulse-Eight ProAV install that doubles as a deliberate lab setup: a working installation that is also the test bed where I exercise product firmware against real-world conditions before it ships.
AV side: a multi-switch OneIP / AV-over-IP system at the same scale ProAV integrators install for end-clients, with endpoints distributed across the property and exercised on UTP and SFP transports. A real multi-switch network with 10G inter-switch trunks and IGMP Snooping properly configured. Standard ProAV-installer practice, not a single-switch test rig. Earlier-generation Pulse-Eight HDBaseT and Neo video-matrix gear has run on the same setup. The system terminates against a varied mix of real consumer hardware (different TV brands and models, AV receivers, source devices), so firmware regressions surface the way they would at an integrator's customer site, not on a clean bench rig.
Electronics workbench: lab power supplies, oscilloscopes, hot-air rework, professional soldering, logic analysers, and a full stock of components across packages and values. Beyond writing firmware I can directly bench-debug, rework, modify and prototype hardware on the same desk. No "send it back to the hardware engineer" round-trip needed.
On top of that I am the final escalation point for Pulse-Eight customer support: when the regular team can't resolve an issue, it lands with me. That makes me one of the few engineers in this niche who can diagnose the field issue, reproduce it in the lab, and fix the product firmware (or hardware) that caused it, in one person. On top of the AV layer runs a KNX / DMX / MQTT home-automation stack with custom tooling, including a Home Assistant integration covering the full Pulse-Eight product family via the UDP control protocol I wrote on the firmware side.
Production-line test fixtures & manufacturing firmware
Ongoing · ProAV manufacturing context
Authored multiple production-line test-fixture firmware projects that run during board manufacturing. Separate codebases from the product firmware, with manufacturing-specific reliability constraints. Directly transferable to industrial-tech production-test work where engineers are needed who can write firmware that runs reliably on the line, not just on the bench.
Multi-year embedded bring-up & rescue work for OEMs
Multiple engagements 2014 – present
A recurring pattern: a hardware OEM has stalled on a bring-up or integration problem. A chip that doesn't behave as its datasheet implies. A port to a new SoC that won't boot reliably. Intermittent failures that only show up against real hardware in the field. The in-house team is stuck, the deadline isn't moving, and someone needs to break the deadlock.
Sometimes that's a few days of bench diagnosis to find the root cause: usually a HAL/userspace wiring gap, a clocking issue, or undocumented chip behaviour. Sometimes it's weeks of writing the missing kernel-side or userspace components from scratch, then walking the OEM's team through the result. Specific clients confidential without their consent.
Production-continuity MCU port — chip-shortage rescue
2022 – 2023 · NXP LPC → TI TM4C drop-in
When the COVID-era chip shortage made the primary NXP LPC MCU unobtainable, I ported the entire firmware family to TI TM4C as a drop-in replacement, with a parallel BGA100 LPC variant alongside it. Bench side: hand-soldered SD-RAM onto a TM4C dev board to prove the silicon could drive the existing memory subsystem, then validated peripheral compatibility against a real product board before committing. The product line kept shipping through the shortage with no production gap. Fast invasive work under deadline pressure: hard to plan for, but valuable when it lands.
P2P Subtitling B.V. — live-broadcast subtitle delivery system
2015 – 2017 · partially funded via Dutch MIT R&D Samenwerking grant
Multi-component live-subtitle delivery for P2P Subtitling B.V., the Dutch live-captioning service serving SBS6 / Veronica / RTL and other commercial broadcasters. Server-side native C/C++ binary handling the captioning workflow stream, plus an Android client renderer on consumer set-top-box hardware, integrated with the existing tvheadend / Kodi PVR stack. Significant R&D thread on audio-fingerprinting-based subtitle/feed sync, including patent due-diligence and licensing-option evaluation.
Live low-bandwidth video PoC — F2/F3/F4 motorsport team
Mid-2024 · proof-of-concept
Proof-of-concept demonstrating live video transport from a Grand Prix circuit back to the team's UK factory over a standard low-bandwidth uplink. Built around NVIDIA CUDA hardware-accelerated AV1/HEVC encoding at 1080p with low-latency tuning, packaged as a complete encoder/decoder appliance pair with LibreELEC and Linux-based player images. Watchdog-supervised, designed for unattended trackside operation during race weekends.
DutchMen B.V. (via Etesian BV) — ESP32 BLE protocol for a designer LED fixture
2023 – 2024
Custom BLE protocol design between two ESP32-based devices for DutchMen B.V.'s designer lighting product, brought in via Etesian BV: a WLED-based main fixture and a battery-powered rotary controller. Initial V1 on native ESP32 BLE delivered a persistent connection with near-instantaneous response. V2 required reworking around a different BLE module whose firmware deviated significantly from the BLE spec. I characterised the deviations bus-by-bus and shipped application-level workarounds for each. Delivered as a self-contained WLED usermod so the customer can keep tracking upstream.
Spotify — small direct engagement
2014 – 2015 · Direct engagement, scope intentionally generic
Small direct engagement with Spotify AB, active from early 2014 through mid-2015. Routed in via the open-source community network around the tvheadend / Kodi PVR ecosystem, where a hardware-side need on Spotify's end matched my public OSS work. Specifics kept generic.
Pivos Group — XBMC-on-Android (TOFU) for set-top boxes & projectors (historical)
~2013 – 2017 · Earlier-era engagement, ~3,000 commits across the public Pivosgroup org
Long-running paid engagement on Pivos's commercial XBMC/Kodi-based stack. They were the canonical XBMC-for-Android sponsor of the early-mid 2010s; their XIOS DS / XS+ was the reference hardware for the XBMC Android port. The work ran across the full stack:
Android base maintenance: forked AOSP across multiple Android versions for several Amlogic SoC generations, with a custom uboot bootloader per generation and a parallel Buildroot Linux variant for headless / set-top / projector configurations.
TOFU app integration: the XBMC/Kodi app port for Pivos's devices, plus the surrounding shell-and-services layer that turned a stock Android image into a Pivos-branded media product. Carried the Kodi PVR work into the Pivos ecosystem.
Heavy China-market integration thread: PPTV and Tencent SDK integrations, regional content providers and package installers, plus the production-side glue to ship media-box variants into the China retail channel.
Antennas Direct (US) — XBMC-on-Android set-top box (historical)
2013 – 2015 · Earlier-era engagement, ~1,117 documented hours over 22 months
Multi-year direct engagement with Antennas Direct, the US over-the-air TV-antenna manufacturer, to build a commercial XBMC/Kodi-based set-top box on Amlogic + Geniatech ATSC tuner. Two parallel pillars: a new content-providing add-ons architecture in XBMC core (with Spotify libspotify as the launch integration), and a port of the VDR DVR backend to Android with VNSI bridge to Kodi PVR plus ATSC sub-channel support across the stack. Plus the Android shipability layer: XBMC as default launcher, OTA updates, NEON build and board-recovery on bricked dev units.
Small-business web work, alongside the embedded & AV practice
Ongoing · Currently for Ontwerpbureau Op den Kamp
A parallel strand to the embedded & AV career: WordPress-based websites, branding, infrastructure and IT support for small Dutch organisations. Currently for Ontwerpbureau Op den Kamp: modern WordPress, plus the GBP / Apple / Bing / LinkedIn online-visibility rollout. Earlier engagements include Keukenzinnig (Dutch kitchen showroom, 2020–2021).
