# Benjamin Wiegand

## Software Developer

## About me

I am a programmer with experience ranging from embedded devices to Android, web, and desktop applications. In my spare time I work on various programming and electronics projects.

I'm also a self-taught systems administrator with experience ranging from static website hosting (like this one) to repairing Postgres database corruption. I do, however, have some formal education in network security.

### Education

I am currently a junior majoring in Computer Science at University of The Pacific in Stockton, California.

A list of relevant University-level courses that I've taken:

- Design and Analysis of Algorithms
- Computer Graphics
- Web Applications
- Network Security (Security+)
- Computing Theory
- Computer Systems & Networks
- Discrete Math for Computer Science
- Digital Design
- Programming Languages
- Application Development
- Data Structures
- Calculus

### Skills

Over the years I have gained experience in these languages:
Java, Python, C++, C, Bash, C#, Javascript, and PHP

My experience includes, but is not limited to:
OOP, Functional Programming, Git, Android Studio, JSON, XML, and YAML

## Projects

### PeerCord (2023)

An end-to-end encrypted client/server messaging application.

More details

PeerCord is a project I worked on during freshman year with my fellow classmates at University of The Pacific for the Application Design course. It is an end-to-end alternative to the popular chat app known as Discord. It has a similar server/client model, but the key advantage over Discord is that the messages are end-to-end encrypted keeping them private from even the server that hosts Peercord, or any data breaches. It is written 100% in Java, per the course requirements. It was a very large project and my key role was to write the entire server application. I also wrote the code to connect the client to the server. We completed the project and did very well.

click image to view in full resolution

### Fast ILO Exporter (2024)

Uses SNMP instead of HTTP when possible to fetch metrics like temperature, fan speed, power draw, drive status, memory status, health, etc. from the ILO controller of an HP server, and exports them to Prometheus. It is significantly faster (15 seconds vs 1 minute) than the pre-existing solutions I tried which only use the slower HTTP API.

More details

Fast ILO Exporter is a quickly thrown together Python project that I made over the course of a few days to export metrics like temperature, fan speed, power draw, drive status, memory status, health, and more from my HP server with an ILO4 controller. I built it after finding out that all the pre-existing solutions used the ILO's HTTP API and were extremely slow, requiring scrape intervals ranging from 1-5 minutes. For my purposes, such a delay is not satisfactory.

My implementation uses SNMP to grab most of this information, which ends up being significantly faster, easily achieving the 15 second scrape interval that I was after. The exporter also optionally fetches some minimal information not available over SNMP using the HTTP API, and maps it with the values received over SNMP. Even with all the HTTP functions enabled, it's still able to achieve my 15 second scrape interval since it only has to make 2 HTTP requests.

I also took the time to make this project publicly available too. You can view the source code on GitHub or my personal git server.

click image to view in full resolution

### SMBus MITM (2023/2024)

Uses a microcontroller to intercept laptop battery communications, providing additional information regarding battery health and maintenance.

More details

After purchasing a 10 year old ThinkPad T420 on ebay, I decided that the battery life could be better. I decided to make a ridiculously large battery using cells intended for electric cars. Coming in at around 189 Wh, it gives about 6-11 hours of battery life with moderate usage and 3-6 hours when compiling FireFox on all cores. To do this properly, I had to modify the BMS' calibration data so it didn't freak out when the battery more than doubled in size.

Since I didn't want to drop $600 on an SMBus battery programmer and subscription battery repair software, I used the I2C line in my laptop's VGA port and wrote most of the software by hand. Through this, I became familiar with SMBus and SBS (Smart Battery System) 1.1 specifications, the protocol and spec used by the laptop and battery to communicate.

Using this knowledge, I added an Arduino which captures and relays the data sent between the laptop and the BMS. The Arduino also requests and captures some extra information intended for the laptop's EC (embedded controller). This information includes cell voltages, temperature, instant pack voltage, instant current draw, charge/discharge cycle count, alarms, and more, some of which is very useful for verifying the health, age, and balance of my custom battery pack. Finally, I added a small OLED display and a button to show all this info without needing a USB serial cable.

click image to view in full resolution

### Android Security Camera (2021/2022)

Turns an ordinary Android phone into a network security camera with a live feed and local motion detection and recording. It additionally sends the recordings to a local server for later viewing.

More details

This is a project I worked on for my AP Computer Programming course in highschool. I wrote an Android app in Java which turns any Android smartphone into a security camera. It syncs with a server (also written in Java) over an encrypted TCP connection to store recordings and motion events. The cameras can also be viewed live by another phone over an encrypted UDP connection. This differs from many readily-available solutions as the server is on your local network, ensuring the likely very personal footage can only be viewed by you. Additionally, the recordings still happen even if the network drops out, unlike with traditional IP cameras.

click image to view in full resolution

### Spy Roomba (2017)

A robot with a camera that can be controlled wirelessly over Wi-Fi with a live video feed. It is built upon a Roomba, using the serial port to control it.

More details

This is a personal project I worked on in middle school where I wanted to remotely control my Roomba from my laptop with a video feed. I connected an Arduino to the Roomba's diagnostic port, paired with a Raspberry pi running an Apache2 web server with PHP and a motion video server. The pi hosts a website over Wi-Fi which allows any modern web browser to view the video feed and send serial commands to the Arduino. The Arduino then sends its own commands outlined in iRobot's SCI specification to carry out control of the Roomba. The Arduino also receives and parses data from the Roomba for safety features such as cliff detection.

click image to view in full resolution