My name is Nicolás Himmelmann. I am a 28 year old guy from Germany, and for my whole life I have been interested in computers, electronics, IT and technology.
In elementary school, I encouraged our teachers to use Microsoft Word (around 2004, I was 9 years old at that time). Soon after that, I developed a website for our class in the first grade of middle school in 2005, where every student could write something about him- or herself. This was also the time when my father gave me my first laptop and computer.
2003 – My first computers
My first laptop was a NEC Versa 550D. It had Windows 3.11 and a tracking ball as a mouse. I had a lot of fun with this one. Unfortunately, the I somehow destroyed the display and so I don’t own it anymore.
The second laptop was a very big and heavy Compaq Armada 1750, which was a widely used business laptop in the company my father worked for. In this device, you could exchange the floppy disk drive for a second battery pack. And you could plugin PCMCIA cards (e.g. for Ethernet or WiFi). This laptop still sits around in my shelf somewhere.
My first desktop computer was a Compaq Presario CDS 520 all-in-one. This was a really big boy, that combined computer and CRT monitor in one big package. I also don’t own this one anymore. At some point it died, and then, since I was curious as a kid, I just tore it apart to see what’s inside. I did the same for several printers and scanners and basically any other electronics I could find that were not needed anymore.
2006 – Starting with web development
Around the age of 11, I got into programming of websites. In the beginning, it was just playing around with HTML and a Mini WebServer software from Aidex. I was so excited when I was able to serve the website over our slow 56k modem connection, and I called the wife of my dad to enter my IP address on her computer to visit the page.
At some point, I also got to know JavaScript and DHTML which I did some crazy stuff with, and later on I also learned PHP and Ajax. Of course, CSS was with me along the way as well.
2007 – Getting in touch with mobile devices
Then around 2007 (I was 12), the iPhone was presented. However, I did not buy the first one because it was too expensive. I bought the iPhone 3G later when I was 14. I jailbroke it and played around with Cydia by saurik and some alternative modifications. You could do so much more with the device without the restrictions imposed by Apple. I also got the first iPad when it came out, because this device had something magical to me.
However, soon enough I switched my phone to a Galaxy Note 1, and also got an Android tablet later on because iOS more and more got this “it just works” feeling, with all the important technical details hidden under the hood. But that’s how it is with mass adoption I guess.
2010 – Learning Embedded Systems and Electronics
At the same time I got into computer stuff, I was experimenting a lot with electronic construction kits from Kosmos, and got to know resistors, LEDs, capacitors and related components.
When I was 15 or 16, my father gave me my first microcontroller. It was the Atmel ATmega644, on a ready-made board together with an ENC28J60 ethernet controller and of course RS232 and so on. This was when I started to read a book about C programming, since I did not know anything about pointers, data types etc. The languages I worked with before (PHP and JS) are dynamically typed, so I had to grasp an understanding about integers, doubles, floats and so on. Sidenote: I did not really understand the concept of pointers until somewhere during my studies, where I finally had an “aha moment”. This was during a practical course about C and C++, which was the best course I ever attended at university.
But back to the last days in school: In the last year of high school, I built a radio transmitter and receiver for the physics class, which worked out quite nicely, I was able to receive the transmitted audio with a usual radio around the house. This was when I discovered my interest for wireless radio technology.
2013 – University
In order to strengthen my knowledge about technology even more, I enrolled for a study program called Information Systems Technology (IST) at Darmstadt University of Technology. I knew that this perfectly suited my interests in IT and electronics.
During my Bachelor, I had four courses of math, one per semester during the first four semesters. I also learned the foundations of electrical engineering, such as complex currents, electromagnetic fields and Maxwell’s equations. Furthermore, I was taught formal fundamentals of computer science, data structures and computer architecture.
I finished my Bachelor’s degree with a thesis in which I developed an Android application together with a system of distributed storage nodes based on Raspberry Pi’s. The idea was to distribute user-generated content based on the context of the user. Depending on the users location, places around the user, the current time of day and more, a set of rules could be defined deciding where to place the data the user uploads in that moment. This work was in context of the emerging concept of cloud and edge computing, which is building up a strong momentum since the first real smartphones were presented around 2007/2008.
2017 – Master of Science
I continued my studies with a Master of Science, which was focused on the development of embedded systems and I also built up more knowledge in the area of wireless networking and network security. Most of the courses were held at the Secure Mobile Networking Lab of Darmstadt University of Technology, where I met very smart people.
During my master studies, I worked with a lot of technology: XBox Kinect, Robot Operating System (ROS), 60 GHz mmWave, Software-Defined Radios, microcontrollers, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Android development.
I finished my Master studies in 2019 with a thesis on a low-latency topic. The goal was to do concurrent wireless cut-through forwarding for wireless sensor networks. This means, a received packet is forwarded immediately, even if it has not been received completely yet. We implemented this on some Texas Instruments microcontrollers (CC2650 and CC2531), which both support the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol.
Internet of Things
During my studies, the term “Internet of Things” (IoT) became bigger and bigger, and was hyped by many companies and institutions. This was just the logical consequence of the development of cloud computing. Companies see the opportunity to tie customers to their cloud and IoT platform, and the more people use their cloud for “IoT”, the more data they can collect and the more money they can make from it.
The IoT-related topic that interested me the most was “Smart Home”. The possibility to combine sensors and actuators in the house or a building was just logical to me. It makes life easier and more convenient, and maybe even more secure. However, this only applies if the device does not have any bugs and vulnerabilities which can always be the case. Developing IoT with a “security-first” approach should be the standard for anyone doing IoT!
I spent a lot of my free time during my studies to build small IoT and Smart Home projects. I just like to build smart devices. I think you can call me a maker.
2022 – Today
Currently, I am working as a Senior Software Engineer for web applications in the area of IoT at DB Systel GmbH. I develop containerized backend applications on the OpenShift platform and build frontend dashboards as well as mobile web apps with Angular and React. And while doing all of that, I get to play with sensors that operate using LoRaWAN connectivity.