https://irjudson.org/Writing on AI systems, hardware, firmware, PCB design, and independent building. Based in Three Forks, Montana. 2026-06-09T09:38:57-06:00 Ivan R. Judson https://irjudson.org/ Jekyll © 2026 Ivan R. Judson /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png 2026-06-09T00:00:00-06:00 2026-06-09T00:00:00-06:00 https://irjudson.org/hardware/entrepreneurship/2026/06/09/led-controller-finding-the-gap.html Ivan R. Judson

First in a series on building the Buffalo Jump Forge LED Controller from idea to Kickstarter. Ryan Pedersen and I go back to my Microsoft days. We’ve been tinkering with LED strips for years — longer than either of us would probably admit. The problem we kept running into was always the same: we wanted to run a lot of lights, outdoors, simply. Nothing on the market did that well. The control...

2026-05-26T09:00:00-06:00 2026-05-26T09:00:00-06:00 https://irjudson.org/projects/astronomy/2026/05/26/astronomus-i-built-a-robot-to-run-my-telescope-so-i-can-sleep.html Ivan R. Judson

I’ve been doing astrophotography for a while now. It started as a hobby and quickly became an obsession, the way these things do. The problem is that astrophotography has a lot of friction — planning which targets are up tonight, figuring out when they’ll be optimally positioned, checking weather, watching satellite tracks, staying up until 2am to babysit the scope so it doesn’t point into a tr...

2025-11-04T01:00:55-07:00 2025-11-04T01:00:55-07:00 https://irjudson.org/technology/professional/2025/11/04/preparing-for-opportunity-a-github-profile-toolkit.html Ivan R. Judson

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” - Seneca I call it serendipity. You can’t control when the right opportunity appears. But you can control whether you’re prepared when it does. Repository: github-profile-upgrade The Preparation Gap Most engineers prepare for opportunity by building skills, shipping code, solving problems. Crucial. But incomplete. What they’re mi...

2025-10-26T16:29:29-06:00 2025-10-26T16:29:29-06:00 https://irjudson.org/internet%20of%20things/2025/10/26/iot-moments-hack-your-car.html Ivan R. Judson

This is a tutorial on how to do basic telemetry collection from your automobile using the diagnostic port that’s on almost every car out there. Here’s what you need: Android tablet with Bluetooth and cellular An OBD-II to Bluetooth adapter — I used the PLX Kiwi Bluetooth Torque — an OBD-II app for Android A car manufactured after 1996 (OBD-II was federally mandated that year) A Nitr...

2025-10-26T16:29:26-06:00 2025-10-26T16:29:26-06:00 https://irjudson.org/internet%20of%20things/hardware/2025/10/26/adding-face-detection-to-your-pi-powered-motion-detector.html Ivan R. Judson

Back during //Build 2015 I was playing with the Project Oxford APIs — Microsoft’s computer vision platform, now called Azure AI Vision — and in parallel building some Raspberry Pi based AllJoyn projects. I ended up combining them: a Pi running the Motion app as a security camera, with a hook that sends every captured frame through Oxford’s face detection API. Here’s how to build your own. Har...