James Hughes
Principal Software Engineer (Applications)
Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJames Hughes is a Principal Software Engineer with three decades of hands-on experience in C/C++ and a deep specialization in embedded Linux and camera/GPU systems. Currently leading application-level work at Raspberry Pi Trading, he combines device driver and GPU firmware development with customer-facing roles—technical support, webinars, and the Powered By Pi programme—to help industrial customers integrate Pi technology. His career includes major imaging work at Broadcom (including the 41MP Nokia 808 project) and DSP Group, giving him rare expertise across ARM CPUs, VideoCore GPUs, and ISP pipelines. An active Raspberry Pi community moderator and contributor, he has improved core camera tooling in the widely used userland repo and authored Pico examples demonstrating multicore and sensor interfaces. Known for pragmatic system-level problem solving, he pairs low-level optimization with clear documentation and customer advocacy. Based in Cambridge, he brings both deep technical craft and practical delivery experience across embedded and IoT products.
12 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
Perse School for Boys, Cambridge2.1 BSc (Hon) Computer Science, 2.1 BSc (Hon) Computer Science at University of East Anglia
English
Github Skills (11)
c1710
i2c10
camera10
embedded10
raspberry-pi-pico10
ssds10
raspberry-pi10
c1110
spi10
sys10
h2649
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
raspberrypi/userland
Jun 2013 - Jun 2019
Source code for ARM side libraries for interfacing to Raspberry Pi GPU.
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:44 commits, 46 PRs, 25 pushes in 6 years
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the `raspberrypi/userland` repository, focusing on the `raspicam` and `raspistill` applications. Their work involved modifying the camera applications to include new features such as timelapse mode, setting shutter speeds, and adding support for RGB888 output. The user also addressed bugs and improved code structure, especially in relation to handling camera component creation and encoder settings. These modifications required changes to both application code and related header files.
gpuraspberry-piraspberryarm
raspberrypi/pico-examples
Feb 2021 - Nov 2022
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:20 reviews, 13 commits, 15 PRs in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:James contributed several examples demonstrating the use of various hardware components and interfaces within the Raspberry Pi Pico ecosystem. Their work includes adding examples for multicore processing using queues, interfacing with I2C devices like the BMP280 and SSD1306 OLED display, as well as SPI-based communication with the Max7219 LED driver and HT16K33 based LED displays. They also fixed coding errors, refactored existing code, and added further demo parts.
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