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tech2urdoorindependent IT & software

Automation, infrastructure, and custom software, brought to your door.

I’m Brad, owner and operator of Tech2UrDoor. I specialise in automation, especially home automation, which is far deeper than it looks. I also design infrastructure, ship web apps, and wire AI into both. Based in Adelaide, working remotely.

This site is itself a portfolio piece. The 4-node Proxmox cluster serving these pages, the live numbers below, the LLM, the observability stack. It’s all stuff I’d build for you, sized to whatever you need.

tools I work with// always growing
ProxmoxHome AssistantESPHomeNext.jsTypeScriptllama.cppZFSInfluxDBGrafanaOSRMNominatimMQTTCloudflare TunnelDockerTailwind CSSPostgreSQLPythonReactn8nWhisper / xTTS
ProxmoxHome AssistantESPHomeNext.jsTypeScriptllama.cppZFSInfluxDBGrafanaOSRMNominatimMQTTCloudflare TunnelDockerTailwind CSSPostgreSQLPythonReactn8nWhisper / xTTS

what I do

automation · infrastructure · software

Specialising in automation. Anything you do more than twice, I can usually do once. Home automation is where I’ve spent the most time. The brief is usually some version of “make the house do the thinking.”

core specialty

Automation: anything you do twice.

Most of the wins come from picking the right targets. Some tasks are obviously worth automating; others quietly burn hours but cost more to replace than they save. I sort the two before writing anything, then ship the wins quickly so the saving starts compounding.

My own house runs on it. Home Assistant, custom ESPHome firmware on off-the-shelf sensors, tariff-aware scheduling, local voice control, and a 23-panel Grafana dashboard over the lot. The same patterns work for a small business: invoicing, lead capture, reporting, the recurring email you keep meaning to template.

Home Assistant deployments
climate · lighting · energy · presence · voice
Custom ESPHome firmware
off-the-shelf sensors, vendor-app-free
Local voice assistants
STT + TTS pipeline on your own hardware
Business workflow automation
n8n · custom scripts · API integrations
Tariff-aware load scheduling
energy bills that actually go down

and the rest of the stack

6 more

Self-hosted infrastructure

Private clouds you actually own. Proxmox clusters, ZFS storage, automated backups, high-availability failover.

  • Multi-node clustering with quorum protection
  • Snapshot-based replication & backup strategy
  • Hardware sourcing & lifecycle planning
  • Migration off public clouds where it makes sense

Web applications

Full-stack web apps and APIs. Comfortable on a $5 VM or a kubernetes cluster, whichever the job needs.

  • Next.js / React / TypeScript front-ends
  • REST and GraphQL backends; database design
  • Cloudflare tunnel & reverse-proxy setup
  • CI/CD pipelines you can read in one screen

AI & LLM integration

Local-first AI workflows where your data stays on your hardware. Or remote API integrations when that's the better fit.

  • Self-hosted LLM inference (llama.cpp, vLLM, Ollama)
  • Custom RAG pipelines over your documents
  • OpenAI / Anthropic API wiring with cost controls
  • Voice synthesis, transcription, and agent workflows

Observability & monitoring

Know what your systems are doing before something breaks. Dashboards, alerting, log aggregation.

  • InfluxDB / Prometheus / Grafana stacks
  • Home Assistant integrations & home automation
  • Custom metrics pipelines for bespoke gear
  • Alert routing into the channels you actually read

Mapping & geospatial

Self-hosted routing, geocoding, and tile-serving. Stop paying Mapbox and Google per request.

  • OSRM / Nominatim / TileServer GL deployments
  • Vector tile pipelines from OpenStreetMap data
  • Custom map styles and offline support
  • Cost analysis vs. Mapbox / Google Maps spend

Glue & rescue work

The half-finished script. The integration that almost works. The legacy thing nobody else wants to touch.

  • Reading other people's code charitably
  • Modernising what's there before replacing it
  • Documenting what survives so the next person isn't lost
  • Often the most useful work nobody puts on their portfolio

live · the rig running this page

updated 3:36:22 AM

Real numbers from the 4-node Proxmox cluster in my home office, which is the same shape of setup I’d build for you. Sparklines show the last hour.

cluster
0 / 4quorate
nodes online · quorum
cpu
0.0%
cluster mean · 1h
memory
0.0%
cluster mean · 1h
network
0.00MB/s
cluster nics · throughput
local ai
ready
llama-server :11434

selected work

8 pieces

Each tile is something I’ve built or am building. Click in for the technical writeup. The infrastructure powering all of this is also what I’d set up for your business.

about

solo · owner-operated

I work across the full stack: physical hardware on the bottom, modern React on the top, and a lot of careful plumbing in between. My particular obsession is automation: noticing “wait, I keep doing this” and replacing it with something that handles itself.

Most of my recent work has been private, self-hosted infrastructure. Home automation setups that do the boring decisions for you, clusters and backups that keep a small business running through whichever SaaS is having a bad day, and the integrations that connect everything to everything else. I’ll write a Next.js app, flash custom firmware to a $15 sensor, debug a kernel-level network issue, or sit on a call working out what you need before any code gets written.

I’m AuDHD, which in practice means I’m unusually good at noticing the detail everyone else skimmed over, building deep mental models of systems, and writing documentation that doesn’t lie. It also means I communicate directly, prefer written briefs to long meetings, and finish what I start.

Based
Adelaide, AU
Timezone
ACST · UTC+09:30
Mode
Remote-first
Stack span
Bare metal → React

get in touch

currently taking work

start a conversation

Have something you’d like built, hosted, or salvaged?

Send me what you’ve got. A vague idea, a half-written brief, a screenshot of the thing that’s annoying you. The first conversation is free, and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s something I can help with.

Email
[email protected]
best for new projects
Location
Adelaide, Australia
remote-friendly, ACST timezone
Availability
Taking new projects
response within 24 h, weekdays