Caffeine, Code, & Chaos

Systems engineer. Robotics geek. Maker of shiny things. Part race car, part glitter. Powered by caffeine and curiosity.

GitHub Actions Runner Scaling Patterns: GitHub-Hosted vs ARC

Scaling GitHub Actions runners requires different architectural patterns depending on whether you’re using GitHub-hosted runners or Actions Runner Controller. Here’s why the approaches are essentially opposite—and how to get each one right.

Hacking the Data Bus in a Chinese Solar Generator

How we tapped the internal RS485 bus in a GRECELL H1200, decoded Modbus RTU traffic, and pulled real telemetry into Home Assistant.

Building an Off-Grid Camera Relay System for a Rural Road

A practical build guide for a solar-powered roadside camera relay using Ubiquiti gear, proper solar components, and a Raspberry Pi monitoring stack publishing to Home Assistant via MQTT.

The Three Pillars of Metrics That Matter

Forget ‘developer productivity.’ Forget ROI theater. Every metric worth tracking answers one of three simple questions: Are we shipping faster? Safer? Cheaper? That’s it. That’s the whole framework.

Auto-Approving safe-settings PRs with OPA and Rego

Use OPA and Rego to validate safe-settings YAML configurations in PRs and automatically approve changes that conform to your organization’s standards.