My skills include a great ability for problem solving, always trying to learn new things, and a love for new technology and efficiency. Passionate about the environment and green energy, I’ve referred 11 people in just over a year to new green energy suppliers. I’m environmentally conscious, recycling as much as possible, and I’ve even developed my own custom-built Internet of Things (IOT) home automation technology that intelligently switches lights on and off to help save energy.
...I love developing unusual and exciting projects in my spare time to push the boundaries and see what I can learn in the process :-)
Being honest, the technology all works - I'm just waiting on nature to catch up and give me an inhabitant in the hedgehog house! I custom built a Raspberry Pi enclosure on the back of a hedgehog house, complete with infrared camera, USB lapel microphone and temperature/humidity sensor - all mounted inside the hog house.
All sensor data is streamed back to a NAS server running inside my house, which also doubles up as a content server for the website which people can visit. The Pi streams direct to YouTube. The website accesses my local server for latest sensor updates, and also accesses a local weather API to check surrounding conditions!
With a really keen eye for design and usability, I focus a lot on the front end development of apps and websites, to keep them clean, usable and simple. Using a website or app should be second-nature, minimal (ideally no) training should be needed. I'm able to code in a multitude of languages, allowing me to become a full stack developer where necessary (see my skills section).
Check out some website designs (10mb PDF)
Rather than buying off-the-shelf home automation gear, I thought it would be more fun to create some new products that I can control remotely and annoy my wife at the same time...! I built custom boxes for rooms in my house (such as the kitchen, hallway and spare room) to control lighting, lamps, heating and monitor motion, light level, temperature (accurate to 0.1 degrees), humidity and air quality. They comprise of Particle Photon IOT development boards, multitudes of sensors and several relays. The system can detect what time of day it is, and decide on motion detection whether it should switch a light on based on surrounding ambient light levels. It can also sensitively switch on lights (eg, at 3am, switch on the gentle downlighters/small lamp, rather than the full-on room lights).
Having tropical fish means keeping water quality in a very tight set of parameters, so I developed a platform to help me manage this. The system was capable of measuring water pH, water hardness and water temperature. It also could manage the specific lighting requirements of the fish - it was able to replicate the sunrise and set of the Amazon rainforest (using API data) to mimic their natural day length.
You can also adjust the pixel-mappable LED tape to be a specific colour and brightness, and even mimic thunder & lightning; all controllable from Apple Home.
A corporate client wanted a unique experience for attendees at a tradeshow - the brief was to have a blacked-out cube that played binaural encoded speech while lights twinkled around you, in a way to 'disorientate' you. The system was comprised of 40 custom-mappable LEDs, a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino UNO, and could take a photo at the end of the experience and instantly email it to the recipient, while overlaying transparent graphics ontop!
I'm really passionate about sharing with others tips, tricks and handy hints that I've picked up along the way, it's important we all grow together. I've delivered many training courses, solo and in partnership with other companies/manufacturers, including designing multi-day courses from scratch and delivering everything from logistics to equipment to training!
Oxford Brookes: Media Technology (BSc) - First class degree with Honours.
Alcester Grammar School:
A Levels (A*A*, A* and A) in Maths, Business and Applied Art & Design.
Alcester Grammar School:
11 GCSEs (A* to A)
Arts Award: Gold
Audinate: Level 3 advanced networking
Windows / MacOS / Linux fluent
Full UK clean driving licence
First Aid training
I always love beating my friends at squash (...I'm actually really average!)
Attending as well as mixing behind a sound desk
Driving my wife mad with new crazy electronics projects
Pool, Mario Kart and Rocket League!
Hawaii has to top that list being honest!
info@harveyappleton.co.uk
+44 (0) 7429 223388