Thanks for visiting my personal blog. I’m Martin, and I live in Sofia, Bulgaria. I manage software engineering teams for a living, and since 2012, this blog is where I keep notes on what I build at home.
It started with a heat pump. I had hacked a Daikin split unit into heating water and wanted to know whether it was actually doing a good job, so I built an energy monitor, then a wireless sensor to go with it, then a smaller one that ran on a coin cell.
In 2016, a few of us started proSmart to make connected thermostats. That is where I learned the parts of IoT the hobby doesn’t teach you – per-device certificates, provisioning and revocation, firmware updates that survive a bad connection, and making a device set itself up in five minutes for someone who will never read the manual.
At work I stopped writing production code a long time ago; I run teams now, and this site is where I keep my hands dirty – partly because I like it, partly so I stay honest about what I ask engineers to do.
These days, the project is the house itself – rooftop PV, a heat pump, Home Assistant with a lot of custom glue, a small VPS for the things I don’t want to rent, and, lately, AI agents doing chores for me. When something breaks, I write it up, including the embarrassing part.
I have been to 40-odd countries, mostly for work, and I hike when I can. I have given several talks at DEV.BG on IoT hardware/firmware topics.
I can be reached on LinkedIn or via the form below.
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