Residential Building System Integration & Automation
Developed and integrated A/V control systems IP video, energy monitoring, and AV control systems for residential and commercial properties.
Cable box control for a customer
AVAI Ventures was my first corporate entry into the physical world of software -- writing code that controlled real things in real spaces. We built IP video surveillance, energy monitoring dashboards, and whole-home AV systems before the word "smart home" existed in mainstream vocabulary. The hard lesson was that integration is the product and as an integrator you were always to blame. No amount of elegant software compensated for a poorly wired cabinet or for another contractor or subsystem that broke -- you are always the one to blame and the one that needs to figure out what went wrong.
Lessons learned
- Integration is the product, not the software
- Hardware-software co-design requires patience at every layer
- The home is the most demanding deployment environment