Projects
These aren't every project I've worked on; far from it. Many commercial systems are covered by NDAs or other confidentiality agreements. Instead, these are a handful of projects that showcase different aspects of how I approach technical problems, from enterprise software and automation to embedded systems and live event technology.
Universal Exports Paintball +
Universal Exports is my own long-running project, originally created for a paintball team made up of friends. It has been continuously developed for more than fifteen years. Although it began as a hobby, it has evolved into a fully featured, commercial-grade platform and serves as my technical playground for exploring new ideas before introducing them into client projects... albeit with considerably more mud, paint and self-deprecating humour!
The platform brings together three main areas: a large multimedia publishing system, event ticketing and product ordering, and extensive automation around bookings, reminders, communications and day-to-day team administration.
Technologies and approach
| PHP with Laravel framework | Laravel provides the foundation for the platform, supporting clear architectural patterns, automated testing, structured APIs and maintainable application code. The system makes extensive use of API endpoints and service-layer components to keep responsibilities clearly separated. |
|---|---|
| MySQL | The custom database design supports website content, events, bookings, orders, products and team administration. Long-term data integrity has been particularly important, with the platform now managing a content archive spanning more than fifteen years. |
| Filament | Filament provides a secure, high-functionality administration area where the team can publish content, manage events and sign-ups, process orders and maintain the information used throughout the site. |
| Vue.js | Vue.js provides dynamic, app-like interactions across the public site, including responsive content loading, client-side state and smoother navigation between rich content, events and transactional features. |
| Automation and event-driven architecture | Events, listeners, actions, queues and scheduled tasks are used to separate responsibilities and automate routine work. This includes event reminders, booking communications, administrative workflows and other processes that would otherwise require manual intervention. |
| Design, image and video | Universal Exports has developed a distinctive visual style over many years. The site combines custom responsive design with extensive photography, image editing, galleries and video content to support a large and continually growing multimedia archive. |
| Code management, CI/CD and gitflow | Although primarily developed by one person, the project follows the same disciplined practices used in commercial work. Git-based workflows, automated testing and CI/CD support reliable releases and have made several infrastructure and server migrations significantly easier. |
Universal Exports continues to evolve alongside my commercial work, providing a safe environment to prototype new architectural ideas, automation workflows and user experiences before applying them in production systems.
TikTok : The "Love it o'meter" +
TikTok ran a multimedia event encompassing speeches, video promotions and tech novelties all the way through to branded food and snacks at a buffet. I developed a bespoke interactive arcade-game style experience. Unlike a conventional web application, this project combined Laravel, embedded hardware, real-time communications and physical interaction into a single seamless experience. From initial concept to live deployment, the complete platform was designed, built and delivered in just a few weeks.
Participants were presented with a large illuminated button array and challenged to complete an interactive game within a limited time. Behind the scenes, the system coordinated physical inputs, illuminated outputs, live scoring, multimedia integration and printed personalised receipts, all while remaining responsive enough for continuous public use throughout the event.
Technologies and approach
| Laravel application platform | Laravel acted as the central application platform for the experience, managing the complete game lifecycle from idle state through active play, scoring, outcome selection and reset. A formal state-driven architecture kept each stage predictable and testable. Administrative tools supported configuration, diagnostics and operational control, with structured API and messaging interfaces connecting the application to embedded hardware and external event systems. |
|---|---|
| Embedded systems | A Raspberry Pi acted as the central controller, with Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers providing dedicated real-time control of the physical hardware. Custom firmware managed GPIO, inputs and outputs independently of the application layer, allowing software and hardware to evolve separately whilst maintaining predictable, deterministic behaviour throughout the installation. The result was a clear separation between game logic, hardware control and presentation, making the platform easy to extend and test. |
| Live integration | Live experiences rarely exist in isolation. The platform integrated with multiple external systems, allowing the application to trigger multimedia, print personalised output and coordinate the wider experience. As with many live deployments, real-world testing exposed subtle differences between expected and actual behaviour, requiring pragmatic engineering, careful diagnostics and iterative refinement to ensure reliable operation before the event opened to the public. |
| Engineering under pressure | From the initial concept through to live deployment, the complete experience was designed, built, tested and delivered within just a few weeks. As the project evolved, requirements naturally changed, requiring pragmatic decisions, rapid iteration and a willingness to adapt without compromising reliability. Final integration and commissioning took place on site, where real-world testing, diagnostics and refinement ensured the experience launched successfully and performed reliably throughout the event. |
Despite combining software, embedded systems, electronics and live event technology, the complete project progressed from initial concept to successful public launch in under two weeks.
Superior Wellness: The Unity Platform +
The Unity Platform is a long-term architectural programme designed to modernise and unify multiple business systems into a coherent, modular ecosystem. Rather than replacing everything at once, the project focuses on carefully evolving existing processes whilst introducing modern services, automation and AI in a controlled, maintainable way.
Rather than viewing each application as an isolated project, the platform takes a wider architectural view, recognising that warehousing, customer services, sales, reporting, AI and operational workflows all form part of a much larger ecosystem.
Technologies and approach
| Introducing modern, modular architecture | Rather than treating the company's technology as a single application, the platform was designed as a collection of clearly defined services with well-understood responsibilities. Standardised APIs allow each component to communicate cleanly whilst remaining independently deployable and maintainable. This provides a practical route for gradually reducing the tight coupling often found in long-lived business systems, replacing complexity with clear interfaces and well-defined responsibilities. |
|---|---|
| Business-wide integration | The objective was not simply to build new applications, but to create a connected business platform. Customer management, warehousing, reporting, finance, aftersales and operational systems all share information through clearly defined interfaces, allowing data to flow reliably between departments whilst ensuring existing functionality remains operational throughout the gradual migration away from legacy software. |
| Business automation | One of the platform's primary goals was to remove repetitive, low-value administrative work. Existing business processes were reviewed to identify opportunities for targeted automation, allowing routine tasks to be completed consistently and automatically. Rather than pursuing large, risky transformations, the emphasis was on introducing many small improvements that collectively save staff significant amounts of time whilst reducing manual effort and human error. |
| AI services | AI capabilities were designed as modular platform services rather than standalone features. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques allow responses to be grounded in company knowledge rather than public internet data, whilst clear governance, auditability and permission boundaries ensure the technology remains practical, secure and appropriate for commercial use. This architecture also allows additional AI capabilities to be introduced gradually as business requirements evolve. |
| Reporting and business intelligence | A connected platform naturally creates opportunities for richer reporting and operational insight. By bringing together information from multiple business systems, dashboards and reports can present a more complete view of the organisation than any individual application could provide. This allows managers and operational staff to monitor key performance indicators, identify trends, track business processes and make informed decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information rather than isolated data sources. |
The project established a clear path away from a tightly coupled legacy platform towards a modular, testable architecture capable of evolving alongside the business for many years to come.
Randox: Reaction Wall Game +
Randox required a reliable interactive control platform as part of a physical arcade-style game for a promotional festival event. This combined embedded hardware, custom electronics and bespoke software into a single integrated system. Unlike a conventional business application, the project focused on real-time control, hardware integration and dependable communication between multiple physical components.
The platform was designed and delivered under demanding live-event timescales, progressing from initial specification through architecture, software development, electronics, testing and on-site deployment within just a few weeks.
Technologies and approach
| Raw PHP application | Rather than relying on a traditional web framework, the core application was implemented as a lightweight PHP service designed specifically for long-running operation and real-time communication. This approach provided fine-grained control over socket connections, resource usage and message handling, whilst avoiding unnecessary framework overhead. The architecture was deliberately chosen to suit the problem, demonstrating that selecting the right technology is often more important than selecting the most familiar one. |
|---|---|
| Real-time communication | The platform was designed around a lightweight JSON messaging protocol, providing a clear contract between the application and embedded controllers. By defining explicit message formats, acknowledgements and event types, both sides of the system could evolve independently whilst remaining fully compatible. Persistent socket connections allowed commands, status updates and hardware events to be exchanged with minimal latency, whilst the structured protocol greatly simplified testing, diagnostics and future expansion. |
| Embedded systems and hardware | The software platform extended beyond the application layer into the physical installation itself. Embedded firmware controlled the real-time behaviour of switches, indicators and other hardware, whilst custom electronics provided the interface between low-voltage control systems and commercial event equipment. The project also included practical hardware implementation, from wiring and electrical integration through to debugging physical installations and designing the next generation of bespoke PCB-based hardware for future deployments. |
Engineering is ultimately about solving problems. In this case, that meant delivering a reliable platform under demanding live-event conditions, leaving a happy client and a lot of entertained punters.