Tim Cocks
Creative Engineer
Overland Park, Kansas, United States
Summary
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RockstarTim Cocks is a Creative Engineer with 13 years of experience building embedded firmware, digital signage platforms, and developer-facing documentation from Overland Park, Kansas. He blends hands-on embedded systems work—contributing display drivers and hardware integrations to Adafruit’s widely used CircuitPython project—with product engineering and ops, leading UX2D’s Android/Linux signage players and backend services. At Adafruit he not only shipped display and hardware support but also improves the ecosystem through technical writing, learning guides, and community support on forums and Discord. Tim’s background includes architecting mobile and signage solutions dating back to CTI Solutions, where the UX2D platform originated, giving him a rare mix of low-level hardware expertise and customer-facing product delivery. Colleagues rely on him for pragmatic problem-solving across firmware, Python applications, and deployment automation. He’s equally comfortable debugging tilegrid behavior in embedded code as he is demoing commercial signage installs to customers.
13 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Stackoverflow
46,718reputation
4.6mreached
1,106answers
87questions
android-activity
top-1%
animation
top-5%
java
top-5%
google-play
top-5%
android-lifecycle
top-5%
listview
top-5%
Github Skills (48)
restructuredtext10
py10
python10
hardware-interface10
firmware10
rs10
display-manager10
io10
android-activity10
driver10
sys10
android10
micropython10
interfacing10
adafruit-circuit-python10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
adafruit/Adafruit_Learning_System_Guides
Apr 2020 - Nov 2022
Programs and scripts to display "inline" in Adafruit Learning System guides
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:55 reviews, 154 commits, 173 PRs in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Tim contributed to a CircuitPython project, likely for display and interaction in Adafruit Learning System guides. The commits show the user modifying code for a PyPortal user interface to handle temperature sensor readings, including fallback mechanisms when the sensor is unavailable. Additional commits involve adding a CircuitPython tilemap game, updating button functionality, and various code formatting and optimization tasks.
inlineservoprogramsadafruitarduino-library
adafruit/circuitpython
Feb 2020 - Apr 2025
CircuitPython - a Python implementation for teaching coding with microcontrollers
Role in this project:Software Engineer (Focus on Embedded Systems/Firmware)
Software Engineer (Focus on Embedded Systems/Firmware)Contributions:93 reviews, 80 PRs, 3 pushes in 5 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Tim contributed to the CircuitPython project, specifically addressing issues and implementing features related to display drivers and hardware interfacing. Their commits demonstrate work on display initialization, updating display regions, and managing the background tasks of display operations, integrating features like removing displayio background checks and allowing for a working terminal display. The changes showcase a focus on improving the functionality and performance of the display-related modules within the CircuitPython ecosystem. Additionally, the user added configuration support for new hardware like the Feather s2 as well as addressing bugs in the software related to tilegrid behavior.
pythonpython-implementationteachingmicrocontrollerpython3
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