the dodobird — a personal corner of the internet

01 / THE FOUNDATIONS

A little background.

Learning the theory.
Putting it into practice.

DIPLOMA

Information &
Communication Technology

Middle Technical University

Technical education

STUDYING

Electronic
Engineering

University of Technology, Iraq

Currently studying

NETWORKING

CCNA: Introduction
to Networks

Cisco · ITN

Networking fundamentals

02 / THE TOOLKIT

Things I work with.

Networks, microcontrollers,
and custom software.

Networking

OPNsense & reverse proxiesRouting, network segmentation, and service access.

01

Routing & gateways

OPNsense routing and gateway configuration.

02

NAT & port forwarding

Network address translation and port forwarding for hosted services.

03

VLANs & firewall rules

VLAN configuration and firewall rules for network segmentation and traffic control.

04

Reverse proxy architecture

Designing reverse proxy architecture for hosted services.

Embedded & microcontrollers

ESP32Radio, signals, and security experiments.

Software-defined radio (SDR)
Oscilloscope
Logic analyzer
Penetration-testing tools
Even Linux on it?

ArduinoConnected boards and physical controls.

01

Multi-node UART ring network

Worked with Arduino Uno boards in a multi-node UART ring network.

02

PC audio controller

A PC audio-control emulator using a rotary encoder to control computer audio.

STM32Getting familiar with another MCU family.

01

Microcontroller fundamentals

Basic knowledge of STM32 microcontrollers.

02

Serial interfaces

RS-232 and RS-485 serial communication.

03

ST-Link debugging

STM32 debugging with ST-Link.

Hardware hacking & modificationInspecting and modifying hardware.

01

Interfaces & signal analysis

Working with CH340 and CH341 interfaces and a logic analyzer.

CH340CH341Logic analyzer

Programming & development

Programming languages

C++

Embedded systems and PC programming.

Python

AI and data analysis.

GoLow-level Go & cryptography.

01

Pure Go / CGO-free binaries

Single-executable, cross-platform architecture using pure Go.

02

Raw TCP & P2P networking

Custom length-prefixed framing and session-scoped heartbeats.

03

Applied cryptography

Cryptographic handshakes and AEAD-encrypted streaming.

Also building user interfaces in Go.

Web developmentCustom interfaces for the way I work.

CUSTOM WEB UIs

LLM Web UI

A custom interface for language models.

Image generation UI

A custom interface for generating images.

Concurrent chat streaming

Streams 64 chats concurrently with a combined throughput of 1,700 tokens per second.

64 concurrent chats1,700 tokens/s combined

Programs I’ve madeSmall tools for real problems.

01

Hospital staff management

An internal program for managing hospital staff.

Internal tool

02

Phone-controlled desktop mouse

Control a PC’s mouse from a phone, with administrator privileges for elevated desktop interactions.

Remote inputAdministrator privileges

RunpodAI training pods & serverless endpoints.

01

AI training pods

Running GPU pods for AI training.

02

Serverless APIs

Building serverless API endpoints for AI workloads.

03

Endpoint improvements

Improving endpoints and their performance.

Qwen image worker

My image generation worker fork.

PC & everyday tools

PC maintenanceA little troubleshooting goes a long way.

01

Laptop repair

Hands-on experience repairing laptops.

02

PC building

Putting components together and getting systems running.

03

Software

Installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.

Everyday softwareDocuments, spreadsheets, and technical drawings.

Microsoft Office + LibreOffice

Basic working knowledge of both office suites.

AutoCAD 100%

Perfect score in a Sheffield university exam.

FFmpeg & transcoding

Automated batch transcoding pipelines and storage optimization using FFmpeg and SVT-AV1.

03 / AT THE WORKBENCH

Hardware & electronics.

From power conversion
to radio signals.

Power electronicsConversion and switching circuits.

Custom PWM step-down buck converters

20 kHz synchronous/asynchronous step-down converters using discrete MOSFETs (IRFZ44N), dedicated gate drivers (IR4427), and hand-wound toroidal cores.

Custom PWM step-up boost converters

Custom PWM step-up boost converter work.

MOSFET drivers

Discrete MOSFET switching and dedicated gate-driver circuits.

Toroidal inductor winding

Custom toroidal inductor winding for switching regulators.

Analog electronicsWorking with audio signals.

Discrete analog preamplifiers
Electret microphone arrays
Op-amp / IC power amplifier stages (LM358, TL084, TDA2822)

RF workModulation and radio modules.

Communication modulation

DSB-TCDSB-SC

Radio modules

nRF24
CC1101
433 MHz radio keying modules
315 MHz radio keying modules

Battery management & backup systemsBattery packs, charging, and backup power.

Building and evaluating battery packs for high-power backup systems.

52 V lithium iron phosphate (LFP) packs
Lithium-ion packs
Nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) packs

CC/CV charging

Constant-current / constant-voltage charging topologies.

04 / THE ONGOING EXPERIMENTS

Built, hosted, tinkered with.

The fun is in
keeping things running.

MINECRAFT SERVERACTIVE PROJECT

One world.
Both editions.

A place to build, explore, and probably
start another overly ambitious project.

JAVA EDITIONBEDROCK EDITION

FabricGeyserFloodgate

YOU’RE INVITED

SERVER ADDRESS

Bedrock port: 19132
Java port: 25565

Open in Minecraft

Opens Bedrock and adds the server on supported devices. Confirm in-game to join.

Prefer to add it manually?

In Minecraft, choose Multiplayer → Add Server (Java) or Play → Servers → Add Server (Bedrock). Use the address and port above.

IP fallback:

The homelabProxmox & a healthy amount of tinkering.

Actively maintained

Private system administration
System maintenance
System architecture & design
LXC hardware passthrough
Container isolation under Proxmox

Basically, sysadmin LARPing. With real servers.

WireGuardMaking the networks talk to each other.

Actively maintained

VPN configuration & maintenance
Port forwarding & IP forwarding
Hosting servers
Connecting to internal networks

LinuxA few distros. A lot of terminal time.

DebianDaily driver

My main system. I also use Debian 13 LXC containers and am familiar with Ubuntu in the cloud.

Arch Linux

Six months of Arch experience. I’ve also tried CachyOS.

RHEL & Fedora

Tried RHEL on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and used Fedora on my PC for a while.

Custom kernel patching

Applying custom patches to Linux kernels.

Minimal Linux distributions

Building custom minimal Linux distributions from scratch using monolithic kernel builds and BusyBox init systems.

DatabasesThe things behind the internal tools.

PostgreSQL

Databases for internal tools.

SQLite

Multiple self-contained instances for tools that need their own lightweight database.

Microsoft Access

Internal hospital system

A database-backed internal hospital system.

Internal store system

A database-backed internal store system.

the dodobird.

Around the internet