combee.net

Projects

Ben is involved with several projects. These include:

• OS and new product development for Roku, focusing on user interface and system optimization, internationalization, tuners, closed captions, accessibility, and software architecture.
• raising three wonderful kids
• building electronic projects on hackaday.io
• serving on the leadership teams for community groups, including Violet Crown Community Works and Trinity Church of Austin
• being a remote member of NYC Resistor, a hackerspace in Brooklyn, NY
• building apps and watchfaces under the name Unwired Widgets

Past projects include:

• Video Button SAO, applying the Vector Video project to a smaller form factor (2024)
• Vector Video, MPEG-1 video player based on the RP2040 (2023)
• Demon, a demake of the Atari 2600 classic "Demon Attack" for the 2022 Supercon Voja badge written in assembly for a 4-bit processor (2022)
• Swatch Internet Time for Discord, a bot to report the current time in .beats used by NYC Resistor for recording official meetings (2021)
• Daft Punk Word Clock, a CircuitPython project in synchronizing music and visual effects. (2021)
• Ravine Despoiler, a demake of Atari's arcade game Canyon Bomber for Arduboy (2021)
• Beam 'Em Up, a flying saucer and cow wrangling game for Arduboy (2021)
• created the short film "Cyberspace is Where We..." which won "Best Use of Found Footage" at the 2020 Cyberpunk Now! online film festival (2020)
• Phantom Camera, a spatial Instagram client for Pebble watches (2015)
• Resistor Time, a Pebble watch face that shows the current time using resistor color codes (2015)
• Enyo JavaScript framework (2012-2014)
• Palm webOS (now renamed as LuneOS) (2010-2014)
• Mozilla Firefox web browser for mobile devices (2008-2010)
• Webduino embedded HTTP server library (2009)
• RGB LED Shield (2009)

Biography

Ben has had a active life in the mobile and embedded software worlds.

Ben grew up in north Georgia, went to college in Atlanta at Georgia Tech, then moved to Austin to work for Motorola's paging products group in IC design verification. After a few years, he moved into compilers, working on the CodeWarrior tools made by Metrowerks. He left for a startup, Veriprise, where he learned Palm OS programming, when them led to Ben becoming lead developer on CodeWarrior for Palm OS. That led to a job at PalmSource in developer relations, then a engineering job at Palm working on the Foleo netbook. In 2008, Ben and his then-fiancée headed to Brooklyn, NY. While there, Ben went off to work at Mozilla on their mobile web browser but returned to Palm after a year to work as engineering lead on the webOS developer relations team. In 2011, he and his now-wife Annelies returned to Austin to start their new life of computer hacking and urban farming. In 2012, Ben was promoted to technical lead on the Enyo JavaScript framework, and in 2013, his group was transferred to LG Electronics where they continued development of their open source JS framework with an emphasis on supporting application development for LG's SmartTV projects.

In 2014, Ben moved on to a new role as a senior developer at Roku working on Roku OS, the Linux distribution and middleware software that powers all of Roku's video streaming product. He's currently the software architect for user interface performance and provides technical guidance and on-device software infrastructure for many of Roku's user interface teams. Previously, he was heavily involved in the release of Roku TV models for TCL, Hisense, Insignia, Sharp, and other brands, with a focus on ATSC digital television and EIA-608/CEA-708 closed caption technology.

Contact

• You can send email to combee at techwood dot org.
• Ben frequently writes about his projects and makes Dad jokes on BlueSky and Mastadon.
• Ben has a number of random projects (and forks of other people's projects) on GitHub as unwiredben.
• Ben is unwiredben on Xbox Live where he mostly plays arcade and indie games.
• Ben occasionally comments on articles at Hacker News as unwiredben.

Trivia

• Ben is not related to the Pokémon named "Combee". However, he does carry some of the Combee Pokémon cards with him to use as calling cards.
• In 1996, Ben won third place in the O'Henry Pun-Off "Punniest of Show" competition. He never returned to competitive punning.
• For many years, Ben was the technical director of "The Show With No Name", Austin's favorite public-access television program where he helped write many of the show's opening lines.
• Ben has a gigantic classic video game collection which includes almost 500 unique games for the Atari 2600. He has written a small Atari 2600 demo that NYC Resistor showed at Maker Faire 2010.
• Ben was a key engineer in the StabbyPhone project at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC in 2010 where NYC Resistor members hacked a pneumatic robot arm into waving a plastic knife around while being controlled by a interactive voice response system.
• Ben won "Best Graphic Demo" for the Badge Hacking contest at Hackaday Supercon 2019 and "Best Graphics" at the Badge Hacking context at Hackaday Supercon 2022.