I’m Kyle Kulhanek. I design and build practical systems—automation, infrastructure, custom software, and physical prototypes—for problems that don’t fit neatly inside a product box.
01 — Working principle
I work across software and hardware boundaries because real problems rarely respect them. The goal is a solution that works in its actual environment, can be understood later, and earns its complexity.
Selected work
These aren’t speculative concepts. Each project links to its public GitHub repository, documentation, implementation choices, and limitations.
A privacy-first browser tool that imports shipping-label PDFs and images, detects content, crops and rotates intelligently, calibrates for real printers, and generates dimensionally accurate commercial label sheets—without uploading a customer’s documents.
A standards-based path from a physical Zigbee button and Brother ADF scanner into Paperless-ngx, with locking, bounded retries, atomic file delivery, and hardened services.
Source & architectureGitHub ↗A completed commercial experiment turned open-source reference: reproducible public-data ingestion, immutable snapshots, validation, search, reports, and an optional storefront.
Read the honest post-project recordGitHub ↗A tiny, targeted Linux service that fixes clipped dialogue caused by downstream HDMI equipment mistaking digital silence for inactivity.
See diagnosis and implementationGitHub ↗Mechanical and electrical modifications for a large-format printer: custom cable-chain interfaces, probe geometry, component relocation, cooling, firmware, and editable Fusion 360 source.
Inspect models and firmwareGitHub ↗02 — Capabilities
I’m most valuable on projects where the edges matter: the app has to talk to the device, the automation has to survive failures, or the prototype has to become something another person can actually operate.
Turn repetitive, failure-prone handoffs into observable workflows across devices, APIs, files, and people.
Python · Shell · REST/WebSocket · Home AssistantDesign, deploy, isolate, and document services with practical networking, virtualization, storage, and recovery in mind.
Linux · Proxmox · containers · DNS · VLANsBuild focused web tools and data systems around a real workflow instead of forcing the workflow around generic software.
TypeScript · React · Python · SQL · PDFMove between scan, CAD, print, electronics, firmware, and fit testing to produce functional physical solutions.
3D scanning · CAD · FDM · embedded systemsReproduce ambiguous failures, isolate the real boundary condition, and leave behind a repair that can be verified.
Linux · Windows · networks · hardware/software boundariesHow I work
A useful engineering process should reduce uncertainty at every step—and leave the next person with more than a mystery box.
Observe the environment, reproduce the failure, and separate the requested fix from the underlying need.
Test the riskiest assumption early with the smallest credible implementation.
Handle interfaces, failure states, usability, security, and rollback—not only the happy-path core.
Use repeatable checks and write down operation, limits, and recovery while the details are still known.
Public workbench
GitHub is the evidence layer: source, documentation, tradeoffs, installation paths, security notes, and the occasional experiment that produced a useful answer even when it didn’t become a business.
Open KyleKulhanek on GitHub ↗K17 Engineering
Dedicated K17 contact channels are being prepared. Until then, the public work remains available on GitHub.