Final-year electrical engineering student at INSA Lyon. I build long-range radio links, bare-metal firmware and the circuits underneath them.
Featured project, Num'axes R&D, October 2025 to February 2026
A hunter following several dogs through dense forest needs to see where each one is, make a collar beep to find it, and keep receiving positions when a ridge cuts the radio link. Commercial products either rely on a cellular subscription or stop at two dogs with no relay.
During my R&D internship at Num'axes I designed, built and validated a prototype that does all of this over LoRa, peer to peer: no gateway, no smartphone, no network operator. I wrote the radio protocol and the firmware for both the collars and the handheld remotes.
Radio
LoRa peer to peer, 869.4 MHz (EU868), SF7, 125 kHz, CR 4/5, 14 dBm
Group size
Up to 9 collars and 3 remotes, no infrastructure
Position frame
8 bytes, 41.2 ms on air (was 11 bytes, 51.5 ms: −19.9%)
Command frame
4 bytes, 36.1 ms on air (was 7 bytes, 41.2 ms: −12.4%)
Channel load
G ≈ 0.068 with a full group, about 87% first-try delivery (pure ALOHA model)
Hardware
Microchip WLR089U0, u-blox MAX-M10S, LIS2DW12
Firmware
C, bare-metal, event-driven; one codebase built for both roles
Estimated autonomy
Collar ≈ 117 h, remote ≈ 27 h on 2000 mAh (prototype, sleep modes not yet enabled)
I started with verbose frames for debugging, then designed compact v2 frames: positions packed as signed 24-bit coordinates (10−4 degree) with a fix flag, commands tagged with a sequence number. Every command (beep, vibration, mute, volume) is acknowledged end to end; duplicates are recognized and re-acknowledged without being executed twice. Pairing only accepts requests inside a time window.
The owner's remote picks a helper from how recently it heard the dog and how close it is by GNSS. Commands go through a request, offer, grant and forward handshake, with the acknowledgement routed back to the owner. Positions are forwarded under a time-limited lease. If the best helper times out, the next candidate is tried.
To ground our design choices, I measured a competing tracker's channels on a spectrum analyzer, then tapped the SPI bus between its microcontroller and LoRa transceiver with a logic analyzer. Decoding the register writes against the transceiver datasheet revealed its real settings (SF8, 62.5 kHz). That analysis is why we chose SF7 at 125 kHz: shorter airtime, better suited to many nodes.
GNSS drifts too much under tree cover to tell whether a pointing dog has stopped, so the collar uses an accelerometer instead. The algorithm tracks changes between samples to cancel gravity, smooths them with an IIR filter and applies hysteresis: 5 s of stillness raises the alarm, 400 ms of clear movement clears it.
Every event is logged over UART with its radio metrics, and each scenario (pairing, commands, GNSS, relay, alarm) has a reproducible test with pass criteria. A few lines from the test campaign:
Radio configured for P2P 869.4 MHz SF7/BW125/CR4_5
RX len=8 RSSI=-104 SNR=7 | GPSv2 g=3 rid=2 dog=1 fix=1
PAIR IGNORED: window closed
DUP CMD ignored (seq=12)
RELAY: REQ → OFFER → GRANT → FWD → CMD_ACK
GPS_RELAY: REQ → GPS_RELAY: ACK OK → RELAY: GPS_FWDThe remote is the autonomy bottleneck at about 27 h, so the largest gain will come from duty-cycled reception rather than fewer transmissions. After that: a dedicated PCB and enclosure, adaptive GNSS reporting when the dog is still, collision backoff, and a wider field campaign in dense, hilly terrain.
Two internships at Num'axes, a French company that designs and sells electronic devices for dog training, containment and tracking across Europe and Asia.
Oct 2025 – Feb 2026
Apr – Jul 2024
Academic and industrial projects from IUT Paul Sabatier, INSA Lyon and Num'axes, from analog front ends to radio and automation.
Num'axes, 2025–2026
Infrastructure-free tracking over LoRa with GNSS collars, acknowledged commands, a controlled relay and an immobility alarm.
Read the case study
INSA Lyon
A complete sonometer built from the ground up: circuit design, LTspice simulation, prototyping and PCB fabrication, grounded in acoustic measurement principles.
INSA Lyon
Dust detection system with a custom circuit and embedded software, with a focus on sensor calibration for environmental monitoring.
INSA Lyon
GRAFCET-based control of an industrial line that sorts parts by color and number, with a complete workflow across several control stations.
INSA Lyon
Machine-learning algorithms for brain image analysis and classification, applying numerical analysis and data processing to diagnostic support.
INSA Lyon
Co-founded a student startup developing intelligent electrical regulation: business plan, prototype and a mobile app to optimize consumption.
IUT Paul Sabatier
A complete robot from schematic to PCB, integrating sensors, motors and path-following control.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Autonomous vehicle controlled from a smartphone, with multiple sensors and wireless communication.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Pneumatic handling station programmed in TIA Portal, part of a team project linking several automated stations.
IUT Paul Sabatier
3D scanning and data acquisition system built on an STM32 microcontroller with distance sensors and servo motors.
IUT Paul Sabatier
ECG acquisition chain with analog amplifiers, filters and signal conditioning for biomedical signals.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Anti-aliasing and smoothing filters, designed and implemented on PCB for signal conditioning.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Real-time guitar effects written in C, including reverb and distortion.
IUT Paul Sabatier
RF sensor that tells water from ethanol, designed in Cadence AWR with Smith chart analysis and a custom PCB with precise copper traces.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Distributed sensor-actuator network on STM32 microcontrollers with wireless links, for environmental monitoring and control.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Reverse-engineered and optimized a patch antenna in Cadence AWR, reaching a −17 dB reflection coefficient at the target frequency.
IUT Paul Sabatier
Photovoltaic modeling, simulation and experimental characterization to analyze conversion efficiency.
What I have used on real hardware, in internships and projects.
LoRa peer-to-peer links and airtime budgeting under EU868 rules, SX127x-class transceivers, Cadence AWR, Smith chart analysis, patch antennas, spectrum measurements.
Bare-metal, event-driven C; Microchip WLR089U0 and STM32; UART, SPI, I²C; NMEA GNSS parsing; Microchip Studio, MPLAB ICD 5, logic-analyzer debugging.
Analog and digital schematics, LTspice simulation, PCB layout, analog filters and amplifier chains, protoboard prototyping, bench testing with EMC in mind.
Real-time DSP in C, IIR filtering, image processing in C++, protocol and state-machine design.
Siemens TIA Portal, GRAFCET, pneumatic actuation, multi-station industrial control.
Oscilloscopes (including mixed-domain), spectrum and logic analyzers; incremental validation, instrumented logging, reproducible test scenarios.
From Malaysia to three French institutions, each step adding a new technical culture.
2024 – present
Diplôme d'ingénieur (Master's level) in Electrical Engineering, with a focus on embedded systems, electronics and automation.
2022 – 2024
DUT/BUT in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Informatics (GEII): automation, microcontrollers and signal processing.
2021 – 2022
French language and scientific foundation year to join the French higher education system.
2016 – 2020
Science secondary school, with a focus on physics, mathematics and the sciences.
I'm Azmin, an electrical engineering student from Malaysia. I have studied in France since 2021, first in Tours, then Toulouse, now Lyon. Working across different schools and technical cultures has made me detail-oriented and adaptable.
What I enjoy most is the step from idea to working hardware: measuring before concluding, finding out why something doesn't work, fixing it, and documenting it while it's fresh. Whether it's a radio protocol, a filter board or an antenna, I like solutions that are practical and clean.
Away from the bench, reading, cooking, running, drawing, guitar and travel keep me curious and balanced.
Reading
Cooking Malaysian food
Jogging
Digital and traditional art
Acoustic guitar
Traveling in Europe and AsiaA question about a project, or an opportunity in embedded systems or RF? Write to me directly or use the form.