Stephan Bökelmann

From tape-out to TypeScript.

Engineer Physicist Consultant emBO++ Organizer THGA Bochum

Find me on

Discord — Full Stack Engineering Direct access to me and my colleagues. Webinars, live Q&A, and community discussions for engineers across the full stack. Join the server →

GitHub @maxclerkwell X / Twitter @MaxClerkwell LinkedIn accelerator-stephan YouTube @MaxClerkwell Instagram @_maxclerkwell TikTok @_maxclerkwell Buy Me a Coffee MaxClerkwell BiliBili @MaxClerkwell Douyin @MaxClerkwell Xiaohongshu @_maxclerkwell ResearchGate Stephan-Boekelmann THGA Moodle Courses

Zero to One: Fun with SWD

May 20, 2026 embedded stm32 openocd swd hardware beginners zero-to-one

You do not need to write a single line of C to talk to a microcontroller. With OpenOCD and a telnet connection you can toggle GPIO pins directly from your terminal — and that is exactly how we build a blinky on an STM32F303K8 Nucleo-32.

Simulating Antiproton Energy Loss in an HV-MAPS Silicon Sensor with Geant4

May 18, 2026 geant4 simulation particle-physics hv-maps silicon-detector antiproton hesr panda fair bethe-bloch

A first-principles walkthrough of using Geant4 to simulate how much energy an antiproton deposits in a thin HV-MAPS silicon sensor — including a hand-worked Bethe-Bloch example, the Landau distribution, and why this matters for detector design before you ever see a beam.

Zero to One: VHDL and a Lattice iCEstick

May 14, 2026 fpga vhdl icestick ice40 hardware digital-design ghdl yosys zero-to-one

A complete walkthrough of writing VHDL, simulating it with GHDL, and flashing a blinking LED onto a Lattice iCEstick — from zero assumptions to a physical result.

Viewing Plots from My Homelab Over SSH X11 Forwarding

May 13, 2026 linux ssh x11 networking homelab bastion wireguard

How to forward X11 through a bastion server to display images and plots from a home machine on a university workstation, without copying files.

How Two Teenagers, a Printer Plug, and a Forum Post Built a Company

May 6, 2026 auto-intern vcds obd ross-tech automotive origin-story diagnostics

Auto-Intern GmbH turns 25. This is the story of how it started: two kids in a bedroom, a GTI, an RS-232 adapter, and the accidental invention of a market.

Are Machines Conscious? A Snapshot

May 5, 2026 consciousness AI philosophy cognition mind

What does consciousness mean — and where on that spectrum do beetles, dogs, humans, and language models sit? No final answers, but an honest attempt to think the question through.

The Game of Life and the Limits of Prediction

May 4, 2026 cellular-automata wolfram entropy philosophy complexity conway

A colleague called it 'useless math but super fun.' I objected. Conway's Game of Life connects self-replicating machines, Wolfram's computational irreducibility, and the unsettling possibility that entropy is not just disorder — it is the universe refusing to be calculated.

Zero to One: A Personal Journal Bot with Telegram and Gemini

May 3, 2026 telegram gemini docker journaling llm python latex obsidian zero-to-one

I spent a day building a Dockerized Telegram bot that turns voice messages and scattered thoughts into a structured journal, Obsidian topic notes, and a compiled LaTeX memoir — and what I learned about LLM APIs along the way.

Enclosureless Cases: When the PCB Is the Enclosure

April 29, 2026 hardware PCB PCBA enclosure gebrauchsmuster sensor 1-wire BME open-hardware manufacturing

Five years ago we filed a utility model for an idea that sounds almost too obvious in hindsight: what if the PCB itself were the enclosure? Here is how Enclosureless Cases works, why we built it, and how you can use it.

The Recursion Problem in Relational Algebra

April 24, 2026 databases teaching THGA relational-algebra

Relational algebra is clean, powerful, and deliberately limited. Here is where that limit bites you.

A Database Is Not an API

April 24, 2026 databases architecture FastAPI Keycloak nerd_force1

Why we never expose a database directly — and what we put in front of it instead.

Zero to One: Why a Filesystem Is Not a Database

April 23, 2026 databases teaching THGA SQL zero-to-one

A practicum that makes the case for relational databases by forcing students to feel the pain of querying flat files first.

If We Can Measure It, You Can Improve It

April 20, 2026 manifesto monitoring automation auto-intern philosophy

A manifesto on why monitoring systems are the foundation of human liberation — and why we build them.

Travelling to China with a Peli Case Full of Electronics

April 9, 2026 china travel hardware EMC logistics

A practical guide for engineers taking commercial electronics to China for testing — ATA Carnet, Peli cases, Frankfurt T2, Guangzhou customs, and everything the internet doesn't tell you.

EMC in Dongguan: 2.5 Years of Work, 4 Days in a Test Chamber

April 1, 2026 hardware EMC China monitoring PoE project

After 2.5 years of development, our reflow oven monitoring system passed CE, FCC, and CCC certification at NTC in Dongguan — and I learned more in four days than in any lab back home.

Ten Years of Conferences: What They're Actually For

March 15, 2026 conferences community emBO++ Open-Skunkforce OSF cpp KiCad reflection

I've spent ten years attending and organising technical conferences. Here's what I've actually learned — about unknown unknowns, the hallway track, and why the dinner after the talks is the real event.

Dual Uplink for 15 People: Starlink, Heimdall, and Linux Routing

February 27, 2026 networking Linux Starlink failover infrastructure Debian sysadmin

Our office network was struggling under 15 people. Philipp and I added a second uplink via Starlink in February — with automatic failover through Linux routing and a small Python dashboard to monitor both links.

Ten Years of PowerSense: Blood, Sweat, and Ferrite Cores

January 15, 2026 auto-intern hardware monitoring rail PoE engineering

January 2016, the DB Netz AG called. Ten years later, the skAInet-PowerSense is still one of the most technically demanding projects we have ever shipped — and the one that shaped how we build everything since.

PCB Design Starts With a README

December 10, 2025 hardware PCB KiCad PlantUML block-diagram workflow documentation version-control LLM

Before opening KiCad, before ordering a single component, I create a GitHub repo, write a README, and let an LLM turn it into a block diagram. Here is why that order matters, what the README should contain, and how the whole thing works in practice.

Biofilms in Rivers: EIS at the Clark Fork

November 28, 2025 EIS MSU Montana biofilm sensor water-quality skAInet hardware field-deployment

From a governor's reception in Kalispell to a datalogger in the Clark Fork River — how a chance introduction led to a year of collaborative instrument development with Montana State University.

KiCon Asia 2025: Speaking on Wire Bonding in Shenzhen

November 15, 2025 KiCad wire-bonding hardware conference Shenzhen particle-physics KiCon

I gave a talk on wire bonding at KiCon Asia 2025 in Shenzhen — two years of bonding CLICpix v3, MuPix8, and MuPix10 with a Delvotec bonder, condensed into 25 minutes.

OmnAIScope: A USB Oscilloscope for Automotive Diagnostics

August 28, 2025 hardware automotive oscilloscope RP2040 KiCad aw4null open-access

How a small aluminium cylinder with a BNC and a USB-C port is changing how independent car workshops do electrical diagnostics — and why the synchronisation trick in firmware is the interesting part.

Getting Started: From Tape-Out to TypeScript

August 14, 2025 meta engineering intro

Why I'm writing here, what to expect, and why the full vertical stack is worth covering in one place.

KiCon Europe 2024: Bochum Goes International

September 20, 2024 KiCad conference Bochum hardware open-source KiCon Open-Skunkforce

After four KiCon Germany editions, we scaled up to KiCon Europe 2024 — 150 people in the Rotunde Bochum, Wayne Stambaugh and Seth Hilbrand flying in for the first time, and a programme that felt genuinely broad.