Daniel Wiegert - About me: Difference between revisions
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I work hands-on in industrial production: safety PLCs (Beckhoff TwinSAFE, Pluto), frequency converters, PLC programming, and the networks that tie it all together. On the IT/OT side I configure VLANs, multicast, fiber, and industrial switches from the CLI. | I work hands-on in industrial production: safety PLCs (Beckhoff TwinSAFE, Pluto), frequency converters, PLC programming, and the networks that tie it all together. On the IT/OT side I configure VLANs, multicast, fiber, and industrial switches from the CLI. | ||
Alongside the electrical work I write software. I program in C, C++, C#, Python, Go, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and Assembly, and build on ARM, ESP32, NXP, and PIC platforms with FreeRTOS. I'm comfortable working at the register level: SWD bit-banging, | Alongside the electrical work I write software. I program in C, C++, C#, Python, Go, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and Assembly, and build on ARM, ESP32, NXP, and PIC platforms with FreeRTOS. I'm comfortable working at the register level: SWD bit-banging, debugging, and writing drivers from scratch. | ||
== Reverse engineering and firmware == | == Reverse engineering and firmware == | ||
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My cat has a custom GPS tracker. The lawn is cut by a ROS-based robotic mower whose navigation and firmware I tinker with. A Raspberry Pi drives an e-paper dashboard, and a Pico pushes pixels to an LED matrix whose datasheets I've had to reverse-engineer. I'm building QuickR, a QR-driven form and database builder, and I've written a virtual tabletop engine for board game nights and a script that watches the Stockholm stock exchange for signals. When I run out of things to build, I map buildings around Skällinge and Varberg for OpenStreetMap. | My cat has a custom GPS tracker. The lawn is cut by a ROS-based robotic mower whose navigation and firmware I tinker with. A Raspberry Pi drives an e-paper dashboard, and a Pico pushes pixels to an LED matrix whose datasheets I've had to reverse-engineer. I'm building QuickR, a QR-driven form and database builder, and I've written a virtual tabletop engine for board game nights and a script that watches the Stockholm stock exchange for signals. When I run out of things to build, I map buildings around Skällinge and Varberg for OpenStreetMap. | ||
My biggest project right now is '''Toetravel''', a self-hosted app for saving places and keeping trip journals. It brings together the travel and the tinkering: private spots like home, friends' places, and camps; trips with GPX tracks and photo albums; sharing with privacy controls like geofencing and follows; an importer that rescues my history from Google Takeout; and a feed that gives data back to OpenStreetMap. It runs Laravel on FrankenPHP with Postgres and PostGIS, self-hosted OSM vector tiles | My biggest project right now is '''Toetravel''', a self-hosted app for saving places and keeping trip journals. It brings together the travel and the tinkering: private spots like home, friends' places, and camps; trips with GPX tracks and photo albums; sharing with privacy controls like geofencing and follows; an importer that rescues my history from Google Takeout; and a feed that gives data back to OpenStreetMap. It runs Laravel on FrankenPHP with Postgres and PostGIS, self-hosted OSM vector tiles. | ||
All of this runs on my own infrastructure. I keep a home lab of servers and self-host as much as I reasonably can, because I'd rather own and understand my systems than rent them. Toetravel shows what that means in practice: my maps, my photos, my location history, on my hardware. | All of this runs on my own infrastructure. I keep a home lab of servers and self-host as much as I reasonably can, because I'd rather own and understand my systems than rent them. Toetravel shows what that means in practice: my maps, my photos, my location history, on my hardware. | ||
== Outside work == | == Outside work == | ||
Most of my days are spent behind screens, inside cabinets, or close to a circuit board, so in my free time I go outdoors. I ride mountain bike trails in the forest, go hiking, and travel backpacking style. No package tours: just a backpack, a rough plan, and room to change it. I usually bring a camera, and photography is a big part of how I experience places. | Most of my days are spent behind screens, inside cabinets, or close to a circuit board, so in my free time I go outdoors. I ride mountain bike trails in the forest, go hiking, and travel backpacking style. No package tours: just a backpack, a rough plan, and room to change it. I skip the biggest tourist traps and go off the beaten path, to the small villages, the local cafés, and the places where people actually live, because that's where you get to know a country. I usually bring a camera, and photography is a big part of how I experience places. | ||
I still have quieter interests too. I'm an amateur astronomer and eclipse chaser, I keep a freshwater aquarium, and I play board games. But nature balances out the technical work. After a day of debugging, a forest trail clears my head better than anything else. | I still have quieter interests too. I'm an amateur astronomer and eclipse chaser, I keep a freshwater aquarium, and I play board games. But nature balances out the technical work. After a day of debugging, a forest trail clears my head better than anything else. | ||
Latest revision as of 21:43, 3 October 2026
I'm Daniel "Damme" Wiegert, a shift electrician (skiftelektriker) at Derome Timber AB, based in Skällinge, Halland, Sweden. My work and hobbies sit where electrical engineering, automation, embedded systems, and software meet, balanced by a strong pull toward the outdoors.
Background
I work hands-on in industrial production: safety PLCs (Beckhoff TwinSAFE, Pluto), frequency converters, PLC programming, and the networks that tie it all together. On the IT/OT side I configure VLANs, multicast, fiber, and industrial switches from the CLI.
Alongside the electrical work I write software. I program in C, C++, C#, Python, Go, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and Assembly, and build on ARM, ESP32, NXP, and PIC platforms with FreeRTOS. I'm comfortable working at the register level: SWD bit-banging, debugging, and writing drivers from scratch.
Reverse engineering and firmware
I like to understand hardware by taking it apart, and taking it over when that's useful. When a device has a microcontroller and a debug port, I want to know what it does and whether I can make it do something better.
That means reverse-engineering boards: tracing circuits, identifying chips, finding test points, and working out undocumented protocols with a logic analyzer. I get into locked or unknown MCUs over SWD and JTAG, sometimes by bit-banging the debug protocol myself when standard tools won't cooperate. Once I understand the hardware, I often throw out the original firmware and write my own from scratch: clocks, peripherals, drivers, and an RTOS where it makes sense, all built on the existing board.
The goal is usually practical: turning a closed, limited device into something open that I control and can fix.
The side projects
I rarely leave a problem alone if I think I can build the solution myself. At work that has meant web-based dashboards for production monitoring. At home it has gotten more out of hand.
My cat has a custom GPS tracker. The lawn is cut by a ROS-based robotic mower whose navigation and firmware I tinker with. A Raspberry Pi drives an e-paper dashboard, and a Pico pushes pixels to an LED matrix whose datasheets I've had to reverse-engineer. I'm building QuickR, a QR-driven form and database builder, and I've written a virtual tabletop engine for board game nights and a script that watches the Stockholm stock exchange for signals. When I run out of things to build, I map buildings around Skällinge and Varberg for OpenStreetMap.
My biggest project right now is Toetravel, a self-hosted app for saving places and keeping trip journals. It brings together the travel and the tinkering: private spots like home, friends' places, and camps; trips with GPX tracks and photo albums; sharing with privacy controls like geofencing and follows; an importer that rescues my history from Google Takeout; and a feed that gives data back to OpenStreetMap. It runs Laravel on FrankenPHP with Postgres and PostGIS, self-hosted OSM vector tiles.
All of this runs on my own infrastructure. I keep a home lab of servers and self-host as much as I reasonably can, because I'd rather own and understand my systems than rent them. Toetravel shows what that means in practice: my maps, my photos, my location history, on my hardware.
Outside work
Most of my days are spent behind screens, inside cabinets, or close to a circuit board, so in my free time I go outdoors. I ride mountain bike trails in the forest, go hiking, and travel backpacking style. No package tours: just a backpack, a rough plan, and room to change it. I skip the biggest tourist traps and go off the beaten path, to the small villages, the local cafés, and the places where people actually live, because that's where you get to know a country. I usually bring a camera, and photography is a big part of how I experience places.
I still have quieter interests too. I'm an amateur astronomer and eclipse chaser, I keep a freshwater aquarium, and I play board games. But nature balances out the technical work. After a day of debugging, a forest trail clears my head better than anything else.