Tony Dicola
Freelance Software Engineer
Kirkland, Washington, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top School
Top expert inInternet of Things (IoT) Development and Prototyping
Tony Dicola is a freelance software engineer with 14 years of experience building cloud services, embedded firmware, drivers, SDKs, and tooling for hardware-focused clients like Adafruit and Make magazine. A former Microsoft engineer who worked on OneDrive/Skydrive teams, he blends production cloud-service experience with deep low-level expertise across Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and MicroPython ecosystems. His open-source contributions span popular Adafruit projects (GFX, NeoPixel, SSD1306, CircuitPython) where he improved core drivers, performance, and cross-platform support, and he’s known for practical fixes that make hardware libraries more robust and memory-efficient. Tony frequently bridges software and hardware needs—adding boot-time orchestration, I2C/ SPI robustness, realtime clock and GPS integrations, and NeoPixel timing optimizations. Based in Kirkland, WA, he packages complex embedded systems into usable libraries, examples, tutorials, video content and livestreams that accelerate maker and IoT projects. Beyond code, he’s demonstrated a knack for translating fiddly hardware quirks into reliable developer-facing APIs and tools.
14 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University
Github Skills (99)
displays10
python-click10
servo10
python10
gps10
command-line-interface10
spi10
file-operations10
neopixel10
micropython10
arduino-library10
pwm10
imagebitmap10
videojs10
embedded10
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
adafruit/Adafruit_Python_BluefruitLE
Apr 2015 - Oct 2017
Python library to simplify access to Bluetooth low energy devices and services on Linux (using bluez) and Mac OSX.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:48 commits, 6 PRs, 8 pushes in 2 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Tony primarily focused on developing a Python library for interacting with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices. Their contributions include the initial setup of the project, implementation of core bluez DBus interaction functions, and creation of services for UART and device information. They also worked on simplifying the test program and added device finding logic, contributing to the library's functionality and usability. They made several refinements, including handling for OS X and Python 3 compatibility.
bluezpython-librarymac-osxpythonosx
adafruit/Adafruit_Python_SSD1306
Jun 2014 - Oct 2016
Python library to use SSD1306-based 128x64 or 128x32 pixel OLED displays with a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black.
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:18 commits, 7 pushes, 4 comments in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Tony primarily contributed to a Python library designed to interface with SSD1306-based OLED displays. They implemented the core display control logic, including initialization, command execution, and data writing, and added support for different display sizes (128x64, 128x32, and 96x16). The user also added support for hardware I2C and SPI communication protocols, and included optional parameters to specify custom I2C addresses and I2C buses, and added FT232H support.
python-librarybeagleboneraspberry-pipythondisplays
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