About me.

Estarreja, Portugal, is still the place I call home. I can open the door and see pine trees and dirt tracks, walk half an hour into town, or go fishing when I feel like it. It's a small place where people know each other, and quite a lot of my life happens here.

Taking things apart

When I was ten, I took apart my mother's computer during the summer holidays. It was the only computer in the house. She was at work. I cleaned it. I'd never dismantled a whole computer before, and once it was in pieces, I'd also dismantled my only way of looking up a tutorial. I was connecting the last front-panel wire as she was parking the car.

I did much the same with remote-controlled cars and whatever else I could get my hands on. My grandfather got me interested in electrical work, and for a while I wanted to become an electrician. Electronic components cost money, though, and ordering them online wasn't straightforward. Programming was easier to get into: I could still write programs even if my computer was a potato.

One of my first electronics projects was for my birds. I love pretty much anything with a beak and feathers. When my grandfather accidentally left their enclosure open, my favourite dove escaped. She eventually came back, but I didn't want it happening again. At about eleven, I fitted a battery-powered buzzer that sounded whenever the door was open.

Hardware, software and a soldering iron

I still particularly enjoy the point where software meets something physical. A good afternoon is one spent soldering and getting everything to work. That's why the weather station and AES IoT gateway are among my favourite university projects. The Aditus access system was another one I enjoyed building.

Sometimes I add work just to try something. In an unpublished weather-station experiment, I used an ATtiny to make a sensor communicate with the ESP32 over I²C. The ESP32 had plenty of spare pins. I wanted to learn how to build my own I²C peripheral.

When something fails, I debug it by separating the problems and dealing with them one at a time. Friends and colleagues also tend to come to me for ideas. I'm currently curious about Audio over IP and reverse engineering embedded devices, and I'd like to spend more time learning analogue electronics.

Aveiro, research and Linux

I completed my bachelor's in Computer and Informatics Engineering at the University of Aveiro in 2024 and am now doing a master's in Computer and Telematics Engineering there.

From 2023 to 2026, I worked in research at Instituto de Telecomunicações, starting with an undergraduate research grant. My first work explored IPFS in 5G scenarios for edge computing. I then worked on the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab (ATCLL), building a platform to see the city's sensor data in real time, including data from LiDAR, radar and cameras. Later, I extended it to look back through past data: average speeds along road sections, congestion and parking statistics. Much of the work involved implementation and reading and writing documentation.

A big part of university life was GLUA, the University of Aveiro's Linux group, where I was a coordinator. I ran introductory Linux workshops, wrote installation and troubleshooting guides, and made a script to install Quartus Prime Lite on Ubuntu and Fedora. I also grew attached to the department itself, and got to know its professors and security staff.

I started with Ubuntu and never really wanted to go back to Windows. I like GNOME's design and being able to automate things from the command line. My homelab runs Linux too. Open source matters to me because I can read someone else's code and learn from it.

Away from the desk

I play accordion in a folk group and help with a carnival group, doing everything from mechanical work to costumes. I make liqueurs, repair computers, do electrical work and set up sound for corporate events. I've also worked behind a bar and built OSB walls. I do quite a few odd jobs.

Running has been part of my life for a long time, although it's taken a back seat over the last few years. A good weekend includes dinner with friends, a rehearsal, a walk or time with my girlfriend. I like having people around. That matters at work too: I want a welcoming team where people are happy to answer questions, because I'll probably ask quite a few.