Hi! My name is Vishal Kotcherlakota. I’m a software engineer by trade. I’ve had plenty of experience in and around IT, ranging from development to operations and everything in between. I’m a huge fan of DevOps, because I think it’s the next logical step for Agile development.
In my spare time, I like tinkering and playing with different things, ranging from web development to microcontrollers and IoT.
I’ve got a broad base of experience, ranging from firmware and embedded software development to desktop applications, web development, and systems administration/operations.
I love presenting, and I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others, whether it be as a mentor or a peer.
I’ve led significant software development efforts, managing teams of up to 25 people. In addition to guiding team members, I’ve got experience handling task allocations, executing build plans, and modifying plans on-the-fly to ensure success. I also know what it takes to run software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions on a global scale.
My resume has more details, and it’s available here.
Whew. This year has been a …definite step up from years past in difficulty. Fortunately, with a few simple tools we can make quick work of this puzzler.
Using Space Hashes will help us a ton here. It will turn the problem into a coordinate-addressed space that will make it easier to check the surroundings for each symbol.
A Word on Coordinate Systems
It’s important to consider what coordinate system we’re going to use. Most of us are familiar with a coordinate system like so from our pre-algebra days:
+y ^...
Archive
Staff DevOps Engineer at NerdWallet
DevOps / Software Engineering at QuanticMind
Attended University of California, Los Angeles (M.S. Engineering, Computer Networks)
Systems/Software Engineering at Lockheed Martin
Attended University of California, San Diego (B.S. Electrical Engineering)
I’ve been fortunate to work on a couple academic projects during my schooling.
This was the capstone project for my master’s degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. Under the guidance of Professor Mani Srivastava, I designed and implemented a time synchronization protocol for BLE devices, utilizing custom GATT profiles and creative use of BLE advertisements.
As part of the project, I had to write firmware for the BlueGiga BLE112 BLE module, which is available on the ARM mbed developer portal.
For an in-depth look at the project, please find it on my GitHub.
For my Operating Systems course at UCLA, we needed to implement a custom CLI from scratch, including the following features:
Interactive editing
Command history
Tab completion
Signal handling
Job control
For the presentation, please click here. For the design document, please click here.
Unfortunately, for the sake of future students, our professor asked us not to share our source code.
This was the final project for my bachelor’s degree at the University of California, San Diego. Along with a lab partner, I designed and built a home automation system powered by an Arduino Microcontroller which controlled lights using the X10 lighting control system and a home theater setup using LEDs. We even built a web server using PHP to control the Arduino. When we set out on this project back in 2010, we didn’t realize we were building an IoT solution.
For the paper describing our project, click here. For the source code, please find it on my GitHub.
For the YouTube video where we demonstrated the project, click here. Please remember that cinematography isn’t one of my strengths. :)
I’ve made a couple presentations. Here are ones I’m able to share publicly.
I’m always interested in new opportunities and challenges. I’d love to hear about yours.