Available for projects
Timothy Adu
Embedded Systems Architect & IoT Product Engineer — Copenhagen, Denmark (Remote)
FirmwareBridge Rating
4.7
Relevant to your project — STM32 LoRaWAN IoT reliability
STM32
LoRa / LoRaWAN
Low-power firmware
Sleep/wake reliability
Field-deployed IoT
FreeRTOS
Production at scale
Cellular fallback
TL;DR
10+ years shipping real IoT products at Sennheiser, Nordsense, Donkey Republic, and WSAudiology — every claim verified, every project documented to production standard.
Has debugged and fixed exactly the kind of intermittent field failure you're describing — devices that work in the lab, fail silently in production after weeks of deployment.
Full product lifecycle ownership: firmware bring-up through low-power optimization, LoRa stack, CE/FCC/IC certification, and 10,000+ unit production runs.
Best fit for IoT connected devices needing one engineer to own the embedded stack from diagnosis through production-ready firmware.
Timothy has shipped firmware for products that run in the field, unattended, for years. Nordsense sensors deployed across European cities. Donkey Republic e-bikes at 10,000+ unit scale. Tector IoT moisture sensors designed for a 25-year operational lifespan. These are not lab prototypes — they are certified, deployed products that had to survive real-world conditions including intermittent connectivity, power supply variation, and temperature cycling.
The problem you're experiencing — a device that runs clean in testing and drops silently after weeks in the field — is one of the most common and costly failure patterns in production IoT. Timothy has seen it, diagnosed it, and fixed it. His approach starts with real-world operating assumptions, not lab conditions. He surfaces hidden risks before they become field failures.
Field failure diagnosis — deployed hardware
Took over a project where prototypes had been deployed at scale and began failing after 6–9 months with no field visibility. Diagnosed a combination of power management failure and battery degradation from unhandled peak current spikes. Stabilized the system without hardware recall using targeted firmware fixes. This is the diagnostic pattern your situation requires.
Cellular modem intermittent failure — root cause
Identified a race condition where unsolicited result codes (URCs) arriving mid-transaction corrupted the AT command flow — causing silent lockups after hours of operation that were invisible in lab testing. Rewrote the driver as an async state machine with proper timeout and recovery logic. Intermittent failures that only appear after long runtime are his specialty.
Low-power production IoT at scale
Tector G2W/G2F sensors designed for 25-year operational lifespan. NRF52 + LoRa platform with full low-power optimization, CE/FCC/IC/RCM certification, custom PCBA test jig. Achieved 30% production cost reduction through supplier work. This is the depth of low-power IoT experience relevant to a LoRaWAN agricultural device.
Production test infrastructure
Built automated test systems for 10,000+ unit production runs at Donkey Republic. CI/CD pipelines, reusable firmware architecture, scalable test jigs. For your situation: the ability to build a repeatable test harness that catches the wakeup path failure before it reaches the field.
10+
Years shipping production IoT
10k+
Units in production (Donkey Republic)
25yr
Design lifespan — Tector sensors
6
Industry verticals shipped
Tector G2W/G2F — IoT Moisture Sensors
End-to-end development of low-power IoT sensors designed for a 25-year operational lifespan. Full lifecycle: electronics, firmware, mechanics, CE/FCC/IC/RCM certification, custom PCBA test jig. 30% production cost reduction through supplier diversification. Currently in production.
STM32LoRa
Low PowerCE/FCC/IC
In Production
Nordsense Mark III — Smart Waste Sensors
Led firmware across three concurrent projects for IoT sensors deployed in waste bins across European cities. NRF52 with BLE, NFC, LoRa, LTE-M cellular modem, Memfault for production device monitoring. Built CI/CD pipelines and reusable firmware architecture from scratch.
NRF52LoRa
LTE-MFreeRTOS
MemfaultShipped
Donkey Republic Gen II E-bike
Technical Lead and Product Owner across four projects for a pan-European bike-sharing platform. Built production test infrastructure for 10,000+ units. Large-scale firmware refactoring for long-term maintainability. Full ownership from concept to mass production.
NRF52BLE
Production TestCI/CD
10k+ units
WSAudiology — Medical-Grade Hearing Aid Firmware
Firmware for medical-grade hearing aid platforms under MISRA-C compliance. Automated test frameworks and static analysis tooling for regulatory compliance. Real regulated-domain embedded work with external team coordination.
MISRA-CMedical
Static AnalysisCertified
First move on every project
Does not start writing code when a founder describes a vague brief. Structures the problem first — deployment environment, power constraints, data model, hardware review. For your situation: he reviews the sleep/wake path and RTC wakeup configuration before proposing any fix.
The mistake he sees most
Founders optimize for getting it to work rather than making it robust and observable. Early firmware works in demos but isn't designed for real-world conditions over time. He catches this pattern early — before it surfaces as a field failure 6 months into deployment with no visibility.
Scope change handling
Presents structured options with explicit trade-offs, timeline implications, and risk before any change is made. If they proceed, it becomes a scoped change request — priced and agreed before a line of code changes. No silent scope creep.
What production-ready means to him
Before signing off: the system handles edge cases reliably, recovers from failures without manual intervention, has enough logging to diagnose field issues, supports secure OTA updates, and has demonstrated stable behavior in real-world conditions. Field validation is non-negotiable.
Best fit for
- STM32 / NRF52 IoT devices with LoRa or cellular connectivity
- Low-power firmware with intermittent field failures
- Deployed hardware that has started failing silently
- Production test infrastructure for first manufacturing runs
- Products heading toward CE, FCC, IC, or RCM certification
- Founders needing one engineer to own the embedded stack end-to-end
- Non-technical founders who need technical clarity without jargon
Not the right fit for
- Idea-stage projects without committed scope or hardware in hand
- Safety-critical aerospace or high-integrity automotive domains
- FPGA development requiring Verilog or VHDL
- Pure app or frontend work with no hardware component
- Engagements below €5k unless tightly scoped troubleshooting
M1
Hardware bring-up & diagnosis
M2
Data pipeline & core functionality
M3
Power management & system behavior
M4
Stability, edge cases & fault handling
M5
Final delivery & documentation
This is for bigger scopes projects . Milestone structure adapts to project scope and could even be a one time milestone transaction if its smaller. Every milestone has a written Definition of Done before work begins.
Payment
Escrow.com
Funds held by neutral third party. Released per milestone approval. Neither side carries payment risk.
Scope protection
Change request process
Any change to requirements is assessed and priced before implementation. No silent scope creep.
Working style
Async, milestone-gated
Documented deliverables at every stage. No disappearing between milestones.
Weekly availability
15–20 hrs/week
Confirmed per project alongside existing consultancy commitments.
Minimum engagement
€5,000–€10,000
Smaller budget scopes considered too especially for well-defined troubleshooting with strong long-term fit.
Timezone
CET (Denmark)
Works async. Available for overlap calls with US and UK timezones.
Full development & system-level work€135/hr
Focused troubleshooting & debugging€100/hr
FirmwareBridge matching , vetting & oversight fee15% - Included in the proposed budget to the founder
Total project investment is discussed and agreed before any commitment. All payments processed through Escrow.com — funds released per milestone, never upfront.
Mar 2024 — Present
Hardware Engineering Technical Lead
Tector — Full-time
End-to-end development of low-power IoT sensors. Full lifecycle from concept through CE/FCC/IC/RCM certification and production. 30% cost reduction through supplier diversification.
Jul 2023 — Present
Embedded Systems Engineering Consultant
Helix Embedded — Founder
Consultancy providing firmware architecture and product development to hardware startups. Mentors embedded engineering students and early-stage companies.
Aug 2023 — Feb 2024
Senior Embedded Software Engineer
EMRI — Marine Autopilot
Embedded software for marine autopilot navigation. Automated test platform. Robust communication protocols across multiple hardware platforms.
Nov 2021 — Aug 2023
Embedded Systems Technical Lead
Donkey Republic
Technical Lead and Product Owner across four projects. Production test infrastructure for 10,000+ units. 15 distributor relationships managed.
Dec 2018 — Oct 2021
Lead Firmware Engineer
Nordsense
Led cross-functional team across three concurrent projects. Introduced CI/CD and reusable firmware architecture. Maintained two hardware platforms simultaneously.
Feb 2018 — Dec 2018
Embedded Software Engineer
WSAudiology — Medical Devices
Medical-grade hearing aid firmware. MISRA-C compliance. Automated test frameworks for regulatory compliance.
Aug 2014 — Jan 2018
Embedded Software Engineer
Sennheiser
3.5 years across three product lines of professional wireless DECT headsets. CI-enabled test automation, production consumer electronics at scale.
Named institution certifications.
Cellular IoT — Mpirical
Engineering Project Management — Rice University
4G LTE — IEEE
BLE Training — Widex
Technical Writing — IEEE
MISRA-C
Barr-C Coding Standards