William Bradley
Owner at Honu Putters
Makawao, Hawaii, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolWilliam Bradley is a veteran firmware and systems engineer with nearly four decades of hands-on experience designing boot firmware, device drivers, and hardware bringup for major companies including Sun Microsystems—where he invented Open Firmware and chaired its IEEE standard—and numerous others. As founder of FirmWorks and Firmware Architect at Nod Labs, he has led low-level development, diagnostics, and manufacturing test systems across consumer and embedded products, and he contributed lasting ideas like the Linux device tree. Now running Honu Putters and a well-equipped personal workshop, he combines precision hardware fabrication with continued open-source work on CNC and Grbl_ESP32 projects, demonstrating both craftsmanship and embedded systems optimization. He holds an MS from Stanford and advanced study in speech synthesis from Cambridge, reflecting deep academic grounding alongside practical innovation. Notably, his career blends standards leadership and entrepreneurial product development with a quirky hands-on side: handcrafted bamboo-and-brass golf putters that mirror his engineering attention to feel and performance.
19 years of coding experience
34 years of employment as a software developer
Certificate of Postgraduate Study, Computer Speech Synthesis, Certificate of Postgraduate Study, Computer Speech Synthesis at University of CambridgeBS, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics, Founder's Medalist,Computer Science Award,Dean's Awards for Scholarship, Service, BS, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics, Founder's Medalist,Computer Science Award,Dean's Awards for Scholarship, Service at Vanderbilt UniversityMS, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, MS, Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Stanford University
English, French
Github Skills (22)
javascript10
c-language10
system-configuration10
server-configuration10
gcode10
hardware10
cnc10
sys10
gr10
esp3210
embedded10
configurations10
stepper10
web-development10
cprogramming-language10
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
bdring/Grbl_Esp32
Feb 2020 - Dec 2022
A port of Grbl CNC Firmware for ESP32
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:90 reviews, 375 commits, 187 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:William contributed to the Grbl_ESP32 project by implementing optimizations and adding new machine configurations. Their commits include a performance improvement for spindle PWM control and the introduction of a directory for machine-specific pin assignments, showcasing their focus on hardware-level interaction. Furthermore, the user’s work included changes to the build scripts, indicating involvement in the build process and ensuring the project's compatibility across various hardware setups. They also fixed issues in the lowrider_v1p2.h configuration, which demonstrates their ability to debug and maintain specific hardware integrations.
firmwarestepper-motorgrblcnclvgl
cncjs/cncjs
Dec 2017 - Mar 2022
A web-based interface for CNC milling controller running Grbl, Marlin, Smoothieware, or TinyG.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:8 reviews, 11 commits, 10 PRs in 4 years 3 months
Contributions summary:William primarily focused on improving the functionality and user experience of the cncjs web interface. Their contributions include fixing bugs related to program pauses and startup synchronization in Marlin, as well as adding features like handling axes in the probe widget. The user also addressed issues related to DRO display in Marlin's inch mode and file path normalization on Windows systems, demonstrating a broad understanding of the project's codebase. The updates also included fixing the jogging functionality, and simplifying the matching of temperature strings, which improved the marlin integration.
controllerserialmarlinraspberry-piweb-based
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