Hi, I’m Stefan

I design electronics for satellites. I study Aerospace Engineering at TUM (Technical University of Munich) and work as a hardware engineer at Engineering Minds Munich, where I design RF and FPGA boards for space applications and lead customer projects from initial proposal to final delivery. When not working or studying, you can find me building retro computers, synthesizers, calculators and other electronics junk, as well as writing about electronics and history on my blog.

See my projects Read the blog

What I’m doing now

I work at Engineering Minds Munich, a relatively small Munich company which builds high-reliability electronics for satellites. In August 2025, I started working here in an internship capacity, and continued as a working student afterwards. At the company, I work on RF PCB design, FPGA boards, embedded firmware, test automation, and documentation. Currently, I lead two customer projects and a small team (two engineers and an intern), which involves running customer meetings, doing design reviews, and project planning. Naturally, since they’re customer projects, I can’t discuss specifics here, but one of my boards is public: the company published an article about a European FPGA board I designed around the Cologne Chip GateMate. It draws under 0.5 W, runs a RISC-V softcore, uses an open-source toolchain, and went from concept to a working board in under two months.

I’m studying for a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering at TUM and will graduate in 2027. The specialties I’m most interested in are avionics and aerospace electronics.

Selected projects

EasyGimbal

A camera gimbal that autonomously tracks a person using on-device AI. The hardware is based around the STM32N6 microcontroller, whose NPU runs the MoveNet pose-estimation model. A PID loop with a dead zone ensures smooth tracking without jittery movements. A stepper motor and a servo move the camera, and the mechanics are 3D-printed from a design I made in SolidWorks.

I took part in the STM32 Edge AI Design Contest (by STMicroelectronics and Elektor) with this project and won 1st place – it got an article published in Elektor Magazine for May/June 2026.

Elektor article →

Fully-actuated hexarotor drone

A TUM lab course project in which we built a hexarotor drone with tilted propellers, giving independent control over all six degrees of freedom. I derived its dynamics and optimized the motor tilt angles in MATLAB, and we designed the frame in SolidWorks. We implemented a feedback-linearization controller in Simulink, tested it first in a Unity simulator and then in a motion-capture lab, where we got it to hover stably. In a lab of 21 people, I took on a leadership role.

DOS Synth

A synthesizer that exposes the full register set of vintage Yamaha FM chips, which I salvaged from old sound cards. It’s built around a CH32V307 RISC-V microcontroller running the RT-Thread RTOS, with an ILI9341 display showing an MS-DOS-style menu and a MIDI input to play the sounds.

I took part in the Hack It! RISC-V Design Challenge with this project and got 4th place, which led to an invitation to speak at the RT-Thread global conference in 2023.

Code →Conference talk

ScanNet++

A 3D spatial-AI dataset from TUM, whose paper has been cited 900+ times. I annotated approximately a third of the dataset.

While working on it, I made the annotation tool render more than 50% faster (using Vue.js and Three.js) and wrote a Python file conversion program that made files up to 20x smaller.

ScanNet++ →

Rostering web apps

At TUM Campus Straubing, I was the sole developer on a project with a PhD student in mathematical optimization, building course timetabling software for the campus and physician shift rostering software for Klinikum Straubing. Both apps are built with Vue 3 and Flask and are still in use, and my work is credited in the acknowledgements of the resulting dissertation.

EventSat developer tool

A VS Code extension I built for a TUM CubeSat team, with approximately 4,000 lines of TypeScript and Python. The extension contains a function browser, script generator, config generator, and built-in documentation.

The problem I was looking to solve was that the documentation for the team’s ground-station software was scattered across different places, so I wanted to make life easier for the researchers so that they spend less time looking for things and more time trying out ideas.

Recognition

1st place, STM32 Edge AI Design Contest (STMicroelectronics and Elektor)
2025
4th place, Hack It! RISC-V Design Challenge
2022
Speaker at RT-Thread Global Tech Conference Watch the talk →
2023
Phase One winner, GNOME Community Engagement Challenge
2021
Won two awards in the FIRST Tech Challenge as a leader of my high-school robotics team
Had my documentation rewrites merged into the official RT-Thread documentation
2022

Writing

I write about electronics, history and whatever else I find interesting on my blog. I post more formal, more impersonal articles exploring ideas in technology and science on StefWiki. I also make and upload electronics projects on YouTube. The most recent blog posts are below:

June 7, 2026
MCU/FPGA Electronic Multitool
Working with development boards and programmers tends to be quite annoying.
Electronics
May 3, 2026
Geran-2/Shahed-136 Drone Hardware Analysis
This is an engineering analysis of a publicly documented weapon system based on parts lists released by the Ukrainian government and other open sources.
Electronics
November 11, 2025
Building my long-desired Lab Bench Power Supply
Four years ago, as I was starting to learn about electronics, I was a high school student with almost no money of my own in a country where Amazon doesn’t exist and import fees are about 50%.
Electronics
November 2, 2025
On Competence Centers in the Modern World
I’ve built a lot of personal projects. I’ve taken part in a lot of group projects. When one does so many projects, one tends to learn a lot about how projects are done.
General
August 28, 2025
Chinese 10x10cm 350W Hotplate Review
As QFN and BGA packages become more popular with chip manufacturers, being able to solder tiny SMD packages now seems like a non-negotiable ability for hobbyists or startups who want to up their game.
Electronics
July 7, 2025
Lenovo Tab M11 Review Update - 1.5 Years Later
After a year and a half of daily use of my Lenovo Tab M11 as a student, I wanted to write an update to my Lenovo Tab M11 Review: The Best Student Tablet.
General

All posts →

More projects

I had a lot of fun building all kinds of stuff with hardware. Some examples include Z80 and 8051 computers, a VGA signal generator, PIC USB devices and a UV-C IoT surface cleaner. All those projects are on a separate page.

Contact

If you’re interested in talking about hardware, systems engineering or any of my projects – contact me! You can find me on GitHub.

GitHub