The catalogue

Projects.

Most of these run in production today, serving real users; a couple are in active development toward launch. Every card is tagged so you know exactly where it stands — no vapour, no prototypes dressed up as products.

Industrial & embedded

Machinery · gate control · field electronics
3 projects
Co-founder Active since 2018

RND Automation

A custom-machinery shop in the Free State, South Africa, building bagging, screening, and packaging machines for agriculture and mining. Three partners; I'm one of them. Every machine is hand-built — no catalogue, no mass production — designed for a specific client and a specific material flow.

My side of it spans the whole machine: SolidWorks for the mechanical and structural design; Delta PLC ladder logic for the control programs; the electrical panel build; the on-site commissioning; and the service callouts when something needs a tweak six months later. Hands-on engineering, end to end.

Role
Co-founder · design · PLC programming · electrical · service
Stack
SolidWorks · Delta PLC · ladder logic · industrial electrical
Industries
Agriculture · mining · materials handling
Location
Free State, South Africa
rndautomation.co.za
Field-deployed RND Automation

HekMotor — smart gate control

An internet-connected gate-motor controller and anti-theft alarm that lives inside the motor's own enclosure. A five-wire field hookup (12 V / 24 V tolerant) slots into any common South African gate-motor brand. Built and sold under RND Automation.

ESP32-driven gate alarm triggering in the field.
  • Open the gate three ways: call from a whitelisted phone (it hangs up and opens — no airtime spent), SMS a passcode, or tap the button on the local Wi‑Fi dashboard.
  • Built-in anti-theft. A vibration sensor sealed inside the motor box detects tampering and fires an SMS + call alert. Arm and disarm from the dashboard.
  • Live dashboard. A mobile-friendly web UI shows signal strength, network registration, motor state, and a timestamped log of every open, wrong-code attempt, and alarm event.
  • Joins your home Wi‑Fi via a captive-portal setup with mDNS and an optional static IP — and falls back to its own hotspot if the network drops.
  • Hardens itself. CSRF defence, constant-time passcode compare, lockout after repeated wrong codes, and OTA firmware updates with automatic rollback.

A reverse-tunnel bridge to the Seidr Labs server is rolling out now, adding remote access, Telegram notifications, and a QR-code visitor intercom — all over the visitor's and owner's own phones, with no camera anywhere.

Hardware
ESP32-WROOM-32 · SIM800C GSM · relay + vibration sensor · custom PCB
Firmware
V12 · OTA-updatable · audit log in RTC memory
Status
Field-deployed on gates & rural properties · internet bridge rolling out
rndautomation.co.za
Field-deployed

Embedded systems & field electronics

Microcontroller projects designed for places where reliability matters and a technician isn't down the road. Battery-backed, watchdog-supervised, weather-sealed where it counts.

Farm irrigation controllers

Arduino-based centre-pivot controllers for farmers. Programmed watering cycles, sensor-driven cut-outs, manual override at the panel. Designed so the only acceptable failure mode is "obvious enough the farmer can fix it himself with a multimeter."

Long-range LoRa networks

LoRa radio links tying remote sensors and actuators across farm-scale distances — kilometres, not metres, no cellular coverage required. Sub-GHz, low-power, ideal for the gap between "needs to talk to base" and "we can't run cable out there."

Stack
ESP32 · Arduino · Raspberry Pi · LoRa (sub-GHz)
Disciplines
Firmware · PCB · enclosures · field service
Status
Multiple units in production on farms and rural properties

Business software

Production SaaS for South African businesses
4 projects
Live New · 2026

Werktyd

Face-scan time & attendance for South African small businesses. Workers clock in and out with a quick face scan; owners get a web dashboard with live timesheets and one-click payroll export. Companies sign up and onboard over Telegram and the web — no app to install.

POPIA-built from the ground up: only a numeric face template is stored, never the photo; a PIN alternative is always offered with no penalty for opting out; and personal data is encrypted at rest. Multi-tenant Node + Postgres with a Python face-recognition matching service.

Platform
Node.js · Postgres · Python (InsightFace) · Telegram
Status
Live · onboarding South African SMEs
Distribution
Hosted SaaS
werktyd.co.za Subscribe for your team
Live

TradeJot

A Telegram-and-web CRM for small businesses — quoting, scheduling, invoicing, follow-ups. The phone is the office. Built for anyone who sends a quote or an invoice — a second-hand shop, a maker, a service business, a trade. No app to install, no separate UI to learn — just message TradeJot the way you'd message a client, or do it all from the web dashboard.

Built around how small South African businesses actually work. Multi-tenant, with a Telegram bot and a full web dashboard so the business keeps running even if one channel goes down. Postgres for state, Node.js for the worker, encryption for tenant data at rest.

Platform
Node.js · Telegram · web dashboard · Postgres
Status
Active · hosted SaaS
Distribution
Hosted SaaS
tradejot.co.za See plans
Live New · 2026

Virtual Doorbell

A doorbell with no doorbell. A visitor at your gate opens a link and your phone rings on Telegram — wherever you are. You see them, speak to them, and decide. Nothing is installed at the gate, and nothing is installed on their phone.

The whole point is that the hardware problem goes away: no wiring, no intercom handset, no visitor app. A printed code at the gate is the entire installation. Node + Postgres with WebRTC video over a self-hosted relay, so a call still connects on the mobile networks people actually have.

Platform
Node.js · Postgres · WebRTC · Telegram
Status
Live · free tier, paid from R10 a month
Distribution
Hosted SaaS
virtualdoorbell.co.za See plans
Live

MugShotter

A privacy-by-design, cross-firm incident index for licensed South African security firms — a lawful, audit-logged replacement for the informal chat groups the industry currently relies on. Member firms check and log cross-firm incident records through a Telegram bot or a dedicated Android app.

Built privacy-first: lawful-basis-gated, a full audit trail on every action, strict access control, and a fail-closed messaging layer. Node + Postgres with a face-matching service — the same secure stack behind Werktyd.

Platform
Node.js · Postgres · face matching
Access
Telegram bot · dedicated Android app
Status
Live · built for licensed security firms
Compliance
POPIA-first · audit-logged · access-controlled
mugshotter.co.za

In development

Building now — toward launch
1 project
In development

Novacar

A self-hosted vehicle-tracking and immobiliser platform for South African owners and small fleets. Live map, geofences, trip history, and remote lock / unlock — with a custom ESP32 + cellular + GPS tracker unit being built alongside the software.

Privacy by design: self-hosted rather than tied to a third-party tracking company, with TOTP step-up auth on sensitive commands. SvelteKit dashboard, Node + Postgres backend, MQTT to the field units, and firmware with a hard safety interlock that won't immobilise a moving vehicle.

Platform
SvelteKit · Node.js · Postgres · MQTT · ESP32 firmware
Status
In development · self-hosted prototype running
Hardware
ESP32 · cellular (BG95) · GNSS · accelerometer

Minecraft systems

Mods & server tooling people actually run
2 projects
Live Production

NovaSync

A Paper plugin that turns any Minecraft server into a fully managed environment. Includes a real-time web dashboard, multi-server sync, an anti-cheat layer, a role/permission system, identity linking, encrypted off-site backups, and voice-controlled admin commands.

Used in production on multiple servers, end-to-end secured with constant-time auth, rate-limited login, and step-up authentication for sensitive actions.

Platform
Paper / Spigot · Minecraft 1.21.x
Status
Active · in production
Distribution
Direct download · auto-update
sync.nova-ai.online install.nova-ai.online
Active development Flagship mod

Nova Quantum

A Minecraft Fabric mod that adds a voice-controlled AI companion to your world. Plays beside you — mines, crafts, builds, fights, follows complex instructions. Designed to feel less like a bot and more like a real friend who's good at the game.

Quantum is the in-progress successor to my earlier Nova mod (which had ~30k lines and a long history; it's now archived). Quantum is a clean rebuild from the lessons learned — smaller surface area, vanilla-rule-correct, cross-version-safe.

Platform
Minecraft 1.21.x · Fabric
Status
Active development
Distribution
Direct download via nova-ai.online
nova-ai.online
Work with the studio The research practice