Embedded · Edge-AI · AI Systems
25 years turning hardware, firmware & local AI into things that ship.
I'm Joe Doran — engineer-founder. I built Cortexa, a home-automation platform acquired by Herman Miller, am inventor on three granted US patents (energy, hardware, smart buildings), and spent two decades across medical devices, ag & energy telemetry and building automation. Today I run a 96 GB local-AI box, off-grid ranch telemetry, and a production agent fleet — I build with AI, not just about it.
The track record
Founder to principal to independent operator. One through-line: full-loop systems that run in the real world — from a home-automation company sold to a Fortune 400 to a local-AI box on a ranch today.
Off-grid ranch energy & water telemetry over LoRa to the edge → InfluxDB → Grafana. A 96 GB-GPU local-AI box running local LLMs, Docker workloads and a voice-gated agent fleet. Plus drone media (AerialCam) and rural land (Brand X) as the business that keeps the machines paid for.
Connected medical device: sensor → I2C → LoRa gateway → HIPAA-compliant cloud. Full software-lifecycle ownership, firmware to backend.
Built an IoT oil-field platform from zero — remote sensors, LoRa, satellite uplink, cloud, client notification. LoRa-to-BACnet gateway firmware in an RTOS environment for Zurn.
Post-acquisition leadership: rapid prototyping, design specs and project management integrating office furniture with technology for a Fortune 400 company.
Building automation across lighting, A/V, security and energy; an active energy manager for Smart Grid demand response; contributed to a gateway patent process.
Home-automation platform built from the ground up: gateway hardware, automation engine, database and GUI — shipped as a commercial product. Acquired by Herman Miller (Fortune 400).
Multek, Motorola and Crystal Semiconductor — software design and embedded engineering, plus a decade of hands-on: radios, oscilloscopes, protocol and spectrum.
Inventor of record
Patents aren't a sidebar here — they're the artifact of the work: granted US patents in smart-grid energy management, modular computing storage, building connectivity and connected-care hardware. Names verified against the USPTO public index; each entry links to the official record.
Herman Miller · gr. 2012
Energy distribution management system (smart grid)
Remote monitoring and demand response for buildings — load balancing, load shedding and peak shaving across lighting, plug loads, HVAC, A/V and access control, with a data-acquisition server that brokers utility demand response (SCE, PG&E). The smart-grid energy manager you'll see quoted in my experience, on the public record.
Bretford · gr. 2019
Modular storage system with configurable power bays
A computer storage enclosure with modular power configuration units — AC, DC or mixed — on a bridge-and-divider bay system so bays don't contact the shelf and can be re-tasked per the device fleet. Inventing across mechanical and electrical as one system.
MillerKnoll · gr. 2022
System architecture for building communications
Occupancy, ops data and operator workflow across a productivity structure — the connected-building layer that turns a smart space into a managed one. Filed 2020, granted 2022 (US 2020/0383487).
filed mar 2024
Wetness-detection pod for incontinence care
A modular pod with an optical label, sub-gigahertz RF transmitter to a gateway, cellular uplink and server-side wearer monitoring — a full connected-care stack engineered end-to-end. Inventor of record alongside co-inventors.
// 3 granted · 1 pending — more in the record, ask and I'll pull the full list.
What I actually work in
→ Embedded & firmware
MCUs to RTOS, the low-level layer most AI people never touch. I write the drivers, the buses and the state machines that keep hardware honest.
→ IoT, telemetry & data
Sensing the world and shipping it somewhere useful — sensors, edge collectors, time-series and the pipelines that bind them.
→ Edge-AI & LLM
Models on the box, not the cloud — inference, retrieval and the tooling that turns a GPU into a working assistant.
→ Cloud, APIs & shipping
The layer that makes it real for other people — hosting, integrations, and a product someone can run.
This isn't a case study. It's the ranch.
On a 54-acre off-grid property in Goliad, Texas, I built and operate the telemetry stack my day job sells by the hour. Every node is deployed, monitored and maintained by me — the same design you'd hire me for, at working scale.
The build — LANDCOMMAND
The machine in the hero panel isn't a demo. It's a 96 GB local-AI box I designed, assembled and run, sitting on this network right now. Local inference, local voice, local agents — cloud only when the task says so.
Why local-first? Privacy, latency and cost: the box answers in milliseconds without a token bill, and nothing leaves the property unless a task explicitly says so. That posture — and the taste to build it — is exactly what I'd bring to a product or a consulting engagement.
After hours
The same hands that write the firmware, off the clock. Every one of these is a system I've built, tuned and kept flying — or keep turning.
Instrument pilot & aircraft owner
A real, full-size airplane, not a model — rated for instrument flight, owns and flies a 2007 Cirrus SR22 with the tail marked SE22: a limited special landing between the G2 and G3, wearing racing stripes, turbo-normalized (the first turbo the line ever got), and one of only 50 built. 600+ logged hours, roughly 500 of them in her.
one of the 50 limited build · N622AD · sunset at the ramp
RC helicopters & airplanes
A separate, smaller-scale world: flying RC since 2008 — helis and fixed-wing, tuned and repaired by hand. Not just a solo bench — I've competed, hosted fly-ins for the community, and sponsored events that drew hundreds of RC pilots.
Drone operator / aerial imaging
A working aerial camera kit for commercial and real-estate work — from capture to a graded, finished deliverable. Aerial perspective as a tool, not a filter.
Woodworking & CNC
Designing and fabricating pieces in my own shop — CAD on the screen, sawdust at the bench. The same design->-fabricate loop as hardware, different material.
Built my own home theater
Not a TV tucked into a corner — a custom cinema room I designed and wired myself: a full Klipsch + Martin-Logan array with 2× 15″ Kickers, a 9.2-channel Marantz SR7013, and three Marantz MA-6100 monoblocs dedicated to the low end and the tops. Projected by a 4K Epson 3-chip. Image chain, audio chain and the room — end to end, by me.
Dolby Atmos · Auro-3D · IMAX Enhanced · 4K HDR
Where to put me
Senior embedded & AI roles
Full-time senior or principal in embedded AI, edge/LoRa systems, or AI systems engineering. The rare profile: 25 years of systems depth plus current, hands-on LLM/agent work — not a résumé word.
AI consultant
Evaluate, architect and ship local-AI / edge / agent systems for your product. I bring the box, the stack and the taste — and I've already run it on my own ranch so you can see it live, not on a slide.
Build-with-AI partner
Co-build a new venture or product where AI is a core capability. I'm the engineer who ships, the operator who runs it, and the founder who's done it before and sold.
Also available as: AI-training code-evaluation (micro1 · Mercor · DataAnnotation) · expert network (energy, water, ag/industrial telemetry, medical, building automation) · domain consulting
Straight answers
What do I actually build?
Can a local-AI system run with no cloud?
What is the local-AI hardware?
How do I work with you?
Where are you, and do you travel?
Why trust this? What's the proof?
What does JBDWW stand for?
Let's build something that runs.
Tell me the system you need — or the role you're hiring for. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right builder, and exactly what it would take.