Paul Hunkin
Freelance software developer

About me

I’m Paul, originally from Tauranga, New Zealand and currently based in Nairobi, Kenya working as the technical cofounder of SafariDesk.

Over the last decade I’ve built software that’s running at Google, NASA, and at various universities and other businesses worldwide. I’ve developed everything from operating systems to web programming languages to 3D rendering engines. If you play games on Android, you’re most likely using code I’ve written. Scroll down for more details!

From 2008 to 2012, I was a PhD researcher at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, as part of the WAND Network Research group. I worked primarily in embedded and distributed systems, though I also worked on a number of more user-visible side projects. You can see my full CV here.

Do you have a project that you think I might be suited for? Contact me!

Testimonials

“ClusterGL is an innovative solution. This approach shows the most promise.” — NASA/JSC

“Excellent, great quality, fast and responsive.” — BluePrint Data

“[The BidBot project is] a mark of disturbed genius.” — CNET.com Crave

“First class job by a first class contractor, who “gets it”, sees the “big picture” and happy to go the extra mile to ensure the project does exactly what’s needed – and on time and to budget!” — tvalley (via Elance.com)

“Paul delivered his work faster than expected; everything was done according to the requirements and he made changes where requested. Thanks!” — vanlance (via Elance.com)

“[CodexCloud is] a truly unique and quality service.” — KeyPulp.com

My work

This is a small sampling of some of my most recent and most interesting projects. For more information on any of these, click the image, or contact me.

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GPS Tracking

SeyTrax is a realtime web-based GPS tracking system I developed for Black Granite Studios. It allows vehicle/fleet owners to track and manage their vehicles in real time, monitoring mileage, fuel and speed.

Geofencing UI

Real time reporting

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ClusterGL distributed rendering

ClusterGL is a distributed/parallel rendering system. It transparently intercepts an applications OpenGL API calls and transmits the resulting command stream across a network to multiple display outputs.

OpenArena running at 8400×4200 under CGL

ClusterGL splitting a simple OpenGL app

This means that it isn’t necessary to write applications specifically to run over multiple render nodes – any arbitrary OpenGL application can be intercepted and displayed across any number of network connected renderers.

ClusterGL is deployed at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and many other businesses and research institutions worldwide. Development in 2011 and 2012 was funded by Google.

Video of ClusterGL running a graphics demo:

More information:

ClusterGL.org – project homepage.
Distributed OpenGL rendering in Network Bandwidth Constrained Environments — paper published at Eurographics 2011.
nasa.gov blog post about ClusterGL and NASAs Liquid Galaxy

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Travel map

I built a travel tracking webapp for myself at http://bieh.net.

It uses the twitter account @whereispaulh and Google Latitude to graphically display my travels on a Google Map. Built with Twitter Bootstrap.

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Network traffic visualization

The BSOD network monitoring system visualizes network traffic in real time – each particle is a network packet, and the colors denote the type of packet.

For more information see the homepage.

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Dataset visualisation

OpenGL-powered C# application that visualizes scientific datasets in real time.

Client testimonial:

“Paul delivered his work faster than expected; everything was done according to the requirements and he made changes where requested. Thanks!” — vanlance (via Elance.com)

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Embedded Systems / WSNs

My thesis involved the development of a distributed operating system for wireless sensor networks. These are embedded devices, with only a few kilobytes of RAM and less than 10mhz of CPU.

A wireless sensor node

TODO: more information

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eBook synchronisation

CodexCloud is a web application I developed that provides an ebook platform for user-supplied materials. Users upload and manage .epub and .pdf documents and synchronize them across multiple platforms.

An article about CodexCloud was titled “Publishers Beware”. However, this hyperbole proved to be overblown.

See: CodexCloud.com for more details.

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Android/libSDL NDK

In 2010, Google employed me to port libsdl to the Android platform. This involved extensive low-level C/C++ native development on the Android OS.

LibSDL is widely used – many games use it to achieve cross-platform graphics and input. As a result, my code has been deployed worldwide on many millions of devices.

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Travel discovery

Destmapper was a web application I developed in 2010 that allowed users to discover cheap flights to new destinations. It used the Adioso.com API, and generated considerable discussion on Reddit.