I’m a builder at heart, and I like building things. 😄
NucuLabs.Dev
When: Feb 2018 - Present
Story:
This is my personal blog that I’ve started to improve my writing skill and share my knowledge with the world.
I wrote my first article How to get started with FreeRTOS and ESP8266 initially on my wordpress-based blog, and since then I moved the blog to a self-hosted static site generator powered by Hugo on GitHub Pages.
Some of my articles were also published by FreeCodeCamp. 🎉
Tech Stack: Markdown, Hugo, Github Pages
Hobby Projects
Projects that I’ve done out of passion for software engineering during my free time 🕑.
Image Tagger (GitHub)
When: Jul 2023
Story:
As an amateur photographer 📸 that sometimes uploads photos online on Unsplash, I find it boring and tedious to tag my images.
I learned to train and make deep learning models from Practical Deep Learning course.
Using this new knowledge, I built this cross-platform Desktop tool with C# and Avalonia UI.
To train my model, I’ve used Python and fast.ai and to get training data, I’ve built a performant web scrapper that evades detection using Python. I haven’t published the scrapper code yet.
Tech Stack: C#, Kotlin, Python, Deep Learning
Note: I’ve rewritten the application using Kotlin, and updated the Github link.
Jekyll To Hugo (GitHub)
When: May 2023
Story:
This is a niche tool that I’ve built to move my blog from WordPress to a self-hosted static site powered by Hugo on GitHub pages.
The initial version was written in 2 hours while I was commuting by train in Romania. It’s far from perfect but it worked well enough for my use case.
It’s published on pipy as a Python package and, the documentation is published on GitHub pages.
I’ve also made a video that showcases the tool.
Tech Stack: Python
Speedy (GitHub)
When: Apr 2022
Story:
Acts as an integration bridge between Loki and Apache Kafka.
We needed to move data from Apache Kafka into Loki, and this project streams the data from Kafka to Loki.
Once deployed, it will consume JSON data from a Kafka topic, flatten it and insert it into Loki.
Tech Stack: Go, Docker, Kubernetes, Loki, Apache Kafka
Image Metadata Remover (GitHub)
When: Apr 2022
Story:
Images contain metadata information such as GPS Data and the device used to take the picture.
Since I enjoy posting pictures online, I developed this command line application to remove the metadata from images so that they can be safely uploaded online.
This project was a nice learning experience with C#.
Tech Stack: C#
Bme680 HomeKit (GitHub)
When: Feb 2022
Story:
Bme680 is an air quality sensor developed by Bosh.
I used it to measure my home’s temperature and humidity from my iPhone. This project turned my Raspberry Pi into a HomeKit accessory, and because of that I can always view the temperature on my phone even when I’m not at home, thanks to Apple’s home hub features.
Since the project runs on Raspberry Pi, I’ve installed a Grafana instance to visualize the historical data from my computer.
Tech Stack: Python, Linux, Raspberry Pi
Library for PMS5003 (GitHub)
When: Apr 2021
Story:
PMS comes from particulate matter sensor and PMS5003 is a relatively economical sensor for measuring air quality.
I have implemented an intuitive library in C# to read data from the sensor using the serial bus.
Tech Stack: C#
Retroactiune (GitHub)
When: Nov 2019 - May 2021
Story:
Retroactiune is a web application built with .NET Core, it is an end-to-end system for managing anonymous feedback.
The goal of this project was to enable its users to collect anonymous feedback.
Let’s say you are a teacher and want to collect feedback for your course. You would generate a set of tokens, then give them to your students. A student can use a token to leave feedback for your course.
It currently lacks a user interface and only APIs are implemented.
Tech Stack: C#, ASP.NET Core, MongoDB
Nucu Car (GitHub)
When: Nov 2019 - May 2021
Story:
This was an odd project, with the release of .NET IoT I wanted
to implement my friend’s project with using dotnet on a Raspberry Pi, then I dropped
the car part and focused entirely on a platform for reading and visualizing sensor data.
I’ve developed the entire project using C#, it featured a telemetry module that collected data from sensors and published it on Microsoft Azure’s IoT Hub.
A gRPC (Remote Procedure Call) server for exposing data to local clients, a circuit diagram.
It was fun cross-compiling the project for ARM.
To visualize sensor data I’ve developed an Android application.
Tech Stack: C#, Microsoft Azure, Linux, Raspberry PI
Snowpiercer Game (GitHub)
When: Jun 2019 - Sep 2019
Story:
I’ve worked on this game with my friends, we built it to teach us Unity. It was inspired by the popular Dyna Blaster game.
Out goal was to become game developers and start a game studio 🚀. Turns up game development is way harder that we thought, 😅 and the project remained unfinished 💥.
If you’re curious about this game you can play it in your web browser.
We also got an Android application published on the Google Play but we didn’t release it to the public.
Tech Stack: Unity, C#
Rock Paper Scissors (GitHub)
When: When: Approximately in August -2015.
Story: Another simple game built for the web browser. 🪨📃✂️
Tech Stack: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, jQuery
Hangman (Github)
When: Approximately in January -2015.
Story:
As I was learning Git, GitHub and Web Development I have developed a small Hangman game using JavaScript.
It featured a full layout for desktop web browsers and a mobile layout. It also played different sounds when the player lost or won the game.
Tech Stack: JavaScript, HTML, CSS
University Projects
Here are a few examples of projects I’ve successfully completed as part of my university coursework at UPT.
simplFT (Github)
When: Oct 2018 - Oct 2018
Story:
This was the final project for my Computer Networks class. It is a simple and concurrent file transfer server.
A user would interact with it using the nc (netcat) unix command line utility to upload and download files from the
server.
While working on this project, I also had the opportunity to debug it using WireShark, and I’ve also had TravisCI (Continuous Integration) set up for running unit-tests.
Tech Stack: Go, Docker
benchmark-scoreboard (Github)
When: Apr 2017 - Apr 2017
Story:
This project was done for the Computer Organization class. We were a small team of four students, and the goal was to build a benchmarking tool. I was in charge of building the website and server for displaying the benchmark results in a web browser. My teammates were responsible for the benchmarking Desktop application and designed benchmarks scenarios.
I used Python and Flask for the backend server and Twitter Bootstrap for the UI. For the database, I used MySQL and deployed the backend on a Linux VPS.
Tech Stack: Python, Flask, Linux
Other Projects
Other and miscellaneous projects 🐈⬛.
FastAPI Course
When: Nov 2022
Story:
I’ve created a my first course on Udemy for learning FastAPI. It’s a hands-on course that teaches you how to build a REST API.
It generated 1K$ revenue over a period of 6 months. Then I took the course down due to not having enough time to keep up with the framework updates as I was the sole person developing the course and editing the videos.
Regarding a few negative reviews, what I learned is to develop a hard skin, ignore them, and persist with your idea 😄. You can’t please everybody when you post content on the internet. 😅
What was great about this experience is that Udemy allows you to reach lots of students; unfortunately, you can’t publish free courses longer than two hours.
Tools: Ubuntu, Pycharm, Kdenlive, Audacity, OBS Studio, Davinci Resolve, GIMP, Affinity Photo 2
