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?
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.