Catalin Ioana
Embedded Software Consultant at Embedded Consultants
Bucharest, Romania
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolCatalin Ioana is an embedded software consultant based in Bucharest with two decades of experience across startups, product firms and regulated medical-device projects, currently focusing on firmware and IoT systems. He blends hands-on low-level development—porting and extending MicroPython for ESP32 and adding mesh, LoRa and OpenThread support—with system-level responsibilities such as leading sub-systems under IEC 62304/60601 and working with QNX and Yocto Linux. As a former Pycom lead firmware engineer and contributor to well-known MicroPython-based Pycom repos, he has deep expertise in wireless protocols, power-aware wake-up logic and border-router implementations. He has co-founded hardware-focused startups, taught microcontroller labs, and led cross-functional teams from prototype to production, showing both entrepreneurial drive and engineering rigor. Comfortable in constrained environments and safety-critical development, he combines academic training (MSc in Computer Advanced Architectures) with practical firmware architecture and consultancy skills. An often-overlooked strength is his track record of adapting higher-level scripting runtimes to resource-constrained IoT modules, enabling faster developer iteration on embedded hardware.
8 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
POLITEHNICA București National University for Science and Technology
English, German, French
Github Skills (17)
openthread10
python10
interrupt-handling10
mesh-network10
interrupt10
iot10
sys10
micropython10
lora10
esp3210
embedded10
iot-devkit10
real-time-clock9
c119
c179
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
pycom/pycom-libraries
Nov 2017 - Jul 2020
MicroPython libraries and examples that work out of the box on Pycom's IoT modules
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:1 review, 41 commits, 19 PRs in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Catalin's contributions focus on enhancements and bug fixes related to the `Pytrack` library, which is designed for Pycom's IoT modules. They added functionality for interrupt wake-up using the INT pin, allowing the module to wake from sleep based on external signals. The user also implemented code to determine the sleep remaining time and integrated a method for setting up wake-up using an INT pin, configuring the edge detection (rising or falling) to enable interrupt-driven wake-ups.
pycompythonboxout-of-the-boxmqtt
pycom/pycom-micropython-sigfox
Dec 2017 - Mar 2021
A fork of MicroPython with the ESP32 port customized to run on Pycom's IoT multi-network modules.
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:1 review, 73 commits, 10 PRs in 3 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Catalin primarily focused on developing and integrating features for Pycom's IoT modules, specifically related to mesh networking, LoRa, and OpenThread. Their contributions involved modifying and extending the MicroPython environment for ESP32, adding functionalities like mesh socket management, border router implementation, and integrating with Pybytes. The commits showcase expertise in low-level network protocols and hardware integration, adapting MicroPython to support various wireless communication technologies. They also updated the Pybytes integration with features for PyMesh support and included bug fixes to address border router packets.
pycomcustomizedesp8266mqttwifimanager
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