Tim Kanarsky
github — linkedin — hackaday — resume by request (of the GET variety)About Me
Hi! I'm a generalist software engineer, which means I'm mediocre at a lot of things at once :D I graduated from UCLA in 2023, and have been working at Tesla since then.
I keep a (very inactive) blog here.
I'm interested in stuff like:
- Robotics control, path planning, and vision algorithms.
- Embedded software -- interactive art exhibits, home automation, IoT gadgets, etc.
- Low-level software -- device drivers, high-performance compute,
latency and throughput optimization through knowledge of the underlying hardware.
More generally, I enjoy working on projects involving software, electrical, and mechanical design. I'm a big fan of Michael Reeves and Stuff Made Here on YouTube. I aspire to someday be on Shane's level of programming, CAD, and fabrication mastery :)
Experience
Robotics engineer at Tesla
- I'm working on the Optimus humanoid robot. Can't say much other than that I really love my job.
Software engineer intern at Facebook/Meta, summer 2022
- Did database refactoring and some fullstack work on the Posts Infra team.
- Was pretty interesting seeing how huuuuuge-scale-software companies tick.
- Wasn't really my cup of tea in the end, but I got to enjoy New York for a summer!
Flight Software intern at SpaceX, summer 2021
- Designed, implemented, and tested a fault-tolerant protocol for configuring data flows on board the SpaceX Starship avionics network.
Avionics intern at SpaceX, summer 2020
- Wrote device drivers and middleware for various automated test equipment (ATE) used in the avionics testing process.
- Later helped optimize a telemetry validator algorithm using vectorized code and parallelism
- Created a software framework for a new type of test procedure, combining ATE control, data validation, and technician-friendly anomaly reporting.
Part of the Amador Valley Robotics software team from 2016 to 2019
- We designed, built, and tested an autonomous submersible, and competed in the annual RoboSub competition in San Diego.
- Wrote a driver to interface a new velocity sensor with the sub's ATMega microcontroller over a serial link. It helped us navigate underwater much more precisely than before.
- Created a web-based admin panel that allowed us to arm or disarm the sub, view feeds from cameras, monitor the internal state of the sub's software, and manually control the thrusters over a websocket. Saved a bunch time when debugging vision algorithms, as we could see exactly what the sub was seeing in real time.
- Prototyped a series of object detection algorithms to recognize underwater obstacles such as colored buoys, floating gates, and plastic bins on the seafloor. I used the OpenCV library to develop routines that color-corrected the images, detected edges and other characteristic features, and clustered them into object bounding boxes.
Projects
Tri-Valley Vaccine Radar
- Wrote a Twitter bot that scrapes COVID vaccine appointment data from Rite Aid, CVS, and Safeway pharmacies in my area, and tweets about new openings.
Homebridge Alarm Listener
- Homebridge is a platform for connecting third-party devices to Apple's HomeKit home automation framework.
- Apple defines certain "device classes" that your IoT gadgets can appear as — switches, humidifiers, sensors, etc.
- I wrote a Homebridge plugin that appears as a "smoke sensor" accessory. It uses the host computer's microphone to listen for smoke alarms going off in the area, and if it hears an alarm going off it triggers the virtual smoke sensor.
- If the user has HomeKit Remote Access enabled, they'll be notified of their smoke alarm going off even if they're away from home.
- They can also use the sensor value in automation scripts. For example, one can turn on the lights throughout the house if an alarm goes off.