Engineer and automation enthusiast building practical tools for smarter workflows, connected systems, and day-to-day productivity.
My professional background is in R&D, technical project leadership, failure analysis, lab operations and cross-functional engineering work. My GitHub projects show the same operating style in a more hands-on form: understand the system, remove friction, make the result visible, and document it well enough to maintain later.
Automation & Productivity Lab
Curated case studies covering Linux desktop workflow improvements, Home Assistant integrations, router/API reverse engineering, RTSP monitoring, meal-planning automation and connected-home controls.
Portfolio: https://github.com/AldenDana/automation-productivity-lab
- COSMIC Grid Workspaces for Pop!_OS — patch set across
cosmic-comp,cosmic-settings, andcosmic-workspaces-epochadding 3×2 grid workspaces, four-direction navigation, settings UI support, overview rendering, and app-to-workspace assignment. Submitted upstream as four pull requests, implementing a long-standing community feature request. - Interactive House Map — a Home Assistant Lovelace card rendering an interactive floorplan: tap a room to control its lights, climate, blinds and vacuum, with a visual room-designer tool so anyone can map their own home without touching code.
- Home Assistant ZTE FIBRA router integration — custom integration for Orange Spain Livebox 6s / ZTE FIBRA routers, including undocumented API authentication and sensor/entity exposure.
- RTSP baby monitor for Home Assistant — Docker/FFmpeg audio monitoring with MQTT volume updates and Home Assistant webhook alerts.
- Mealie nutrition automation — meal-plan generation and a Home Assistant dashboard for weekly nutrition tracking.
- Integrations that make existing devices or services useful in the real world.
- Small automations that remove repetitive household or workflow friction.
- Linux/productivity improvements where the default tool almost fits, but not quite.
- Dashboards and documentation that make systems understandable instead of mysterious.
Home Assistant · Linux · Docker · MQTT · APIs · automation · workflow tooling · debugging undocumented systems
Everything here is free and MIT-licensed. If a project saved you some time, sponsorship is welcome and entirely optional — it never gates features or support.