Sistason

Prüfungsamtprojekt

The Prüfungsamtproject is a student project from 2012, which was started to digitalize the analog waiting numbers at the exam office of the TU Berlin.

Since the university didn't want to upgrade their old systems, the students had to wait all crowded in one cold floor watching the counters for their numbers.
As efforts to change the situation failed in the political dimension, I set up a system comprised of Raspberry Pis, Webcams and a website to be able to watch the counters remotely, enabling students to make use of their time elsewhere, where there is more sun, wifi or power outlets.

Inspired by this, I did my masters thesis on the topic of remote, autonomous data collectors.
The service is still running and doing its job at pa.freitagsrunde.org,
being actively maintained on github.

Drones

Remote-controlled aircraft inspired by all through my childhood. But own advances into the topic came only after a university course showed how to design, build and fly RC models, in that case airships.
With knowledge into image recognition and systems administration, my interests were not in the field of speed and acrobatics, but maximising airtime and autonomous flight.
As flightcontrollers and ESCs improved, there was always "just another project" and currently, my drone projects consists of the models shown above:

• Airship: As I got the airship-frame off the university course, that was my first model. Sadly, it has a (patched) hole, but therefore looses more gas than usually. Also, an helium-driven airship is basically only for flying indoors, for which you need a big hall, which means setup-costs and so isn't really a model to experiment on, as you cannot "just" test something. Also, the frame is a bit too big for the halls of the Congress, which would've motivated me to do a FPV/control-by-wifi style airship, cruising through the CCH/CCL while sitting at the assembly...
• Microquad: My attempt to build a 5" brushless quadcopter as light as possible. It weights 38g/62g with battery and has roughly 100g of thrust, which is nice for flying indoors and not being able to break much.
• Mediumquad v1: The first "real" quadrocopter. The first version was a development-quad, trying out flight controllers and loading an Odroid-W with Wifi and a Raspberry Pi Cam. The video-link was never stable enough to do FPV, but produced a lot of insights to video streaming and volatile systems. In the true sense of the word...
• Mediumquad v2: The current version. The development parts were ditched and replaced by usual FPV-gear, a new 250er frame and a cheap cam for recordings. With this, real FPV on a moderate platform is possible, for learning flying and doing tricks. Sadly, a bit underpowered on 3s.
• Wing Wing: I started on planes after seeing the freedom they provide when flying FPV. The first one was a Wing Wing Deltawing. The feeling of flying that thing FPV for the first time really was awesome, but the first crash after loosing orientation and just only finding the model again showed some pitfalls. I upgraded with a OSD, but this showed flaws in the power management and the OSD flickered too much. Also, the very agile and fast Deltawing was a bit too fast for my taste.
• Slowflyer: The Wing Wing hardware was retrofitted into a bigger model (AXN Floater-Jet), with GPS and ReturnToHome-functions, for more pleasant flights. Sadly, a servo lost connection during the first flight, which meant insufficient control for a real flight. Currently, the plane support in Cleanflight makes too many problem for trying it again.
• Solar/Remote-plane: A project for the distant future, a dream of freedom in my head. Equip a motorglider with FPV, solar panels + LTE and cruise for kilometers BLOS :)
Close Project

Coding

Despite the preview image showing HTML (of itself), my software development focusses mostly on python.
I like to fix and automate day-to-day problems, or code solutions for improving the performance or usuability of things I do, be it casting, autonomous flight or backups.
I try to write clean code and to use established coding techniques for producing better results. Test-driven development and coding katas are things I mostly only do in software craft events, as I usually focus on small scripts and lack the right environment to really learn and internalize these concepts.
The best description for my coding focus would be either DevOps or System-of-Sytems engineering. As I have a lot of background in different levels of IT, I have an understanding of the basics and the interworkings between different layers. This leads to a broad understanding of architectures and systems: Knowing hardware specifications and electrical engineering; how the ARM-processor works and having developed an own (ARM-) operating system in university; being fluent in the Linux details of how operating systems work; doing network operations and virtual machine / container setups; running applications for myself and a few users; securing, monitoring and backupping my network and devices; using the internet and social media; participating in various communities, from CCC to gaming.

Dota 2 Broadcasting

As with every other sport, e-sports also works better when there is commentary to a broadcast of a competition. These commentaries provide either play-by-play comments, in-depth analysis of the tactics, Hype and fun for the viewers, or all of those aspects combined, to enrich the viewing experience and entertain beyond the sport itself.

I started broadcasting Dota 2 in 2014, as people said it was fun listening to me. Following the scene and noticing a lack of german casters not speaking a bavarian dialect, I expanded commenting games of firends to german and later international leagues.
As the german broadcasting scene was and is quite small (most germans watch the english broadcasts), I got noticed soon and integrated myself in the one semi-professional german casting studio, SaphiraTV. This lead to broadcasting all major Dota 2 tournaments in 2015, notably DAC, joinDOTA Masters and ESL One Frankfurt, the latter even in the stadium during the event.
Sadly, university ended and I started working in summer 2015, which abruptly ended casting. There was just no time anymore and work required me to be constantly on the road, without access to the internet access required for streaming content. Even after the period on the road, my workplace flat has not enough upload bandwith for streaming, which delayed restarting the fun I had while casting Dota 2. Planned is to start producing content again when living full-time in Berlin again.

Broadcasting while studing computer science lead to many projects regarding automation, some of which were too ambitious to be finished. A GUI for the most common actions required during a stream never saw the light of day. The same happened with a remote setup involving 3 PCs and Steam Inhome-Streaming (IHS), to be able to work on the stream in parallel with multiple people and to use IHS to stream/upload from a remote PC and controlling via a mobile device not requiring high upload bandwidth. A useful, completed project was the overlayswitcher, as a broadcast uses different camera screens for different stages of the game and it always bugged me when production forgot to switch them in time; therefore, I automated that task.

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Project Name

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