Gareth Parris

Finalist, 2025 Graham Impact Awards

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some welcome news to close out the year: I was named a Finalist for BrightSign's 2025 Graham Impact Awards, a company-wide award run by Graham Partners, BrightSign's private equity backer, recognising contribution to the business.

It landed at a good point in the year. I'd been promoted to Director of Software Engineering not long before, now leading the Cloud, Platform and Client teams behind the BSN.Cloud SaaS platform and BrightSign Control Plus, and this was a nice bit of external recognition for the work those teams have been putting in.

None of it happens solo. Thanks to everyone across Cloud, Platform and Client for the work that made this possible.

Event Technology of the Year 2020 Drum Award

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Last year I created a post about an Interactive Hardware and Software project I worked on with Two Lines Meet for MIT's Campaign for a Better World.

In summer 2020, Two Lines Meet entered the Drum Awards, in the category "Event Technology of the Year". We were up against some strong, established contenders, like The Mill, and Momentum Worldwide.

As it turns out, we won the category award! I'd like to pass on my thanks to everyone in the team who helped us achieve this!

You can find the original post here.

Custom SoHo Server Rack with Ubiquity Unifi

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I've just updated my SoHo network set-up from:

UniFi USG 3P
UniFi USW-24-PoE 250 Switch
UniFi Cloud Key G2 Plus
2x UniFi AC Pro Access Points
3x UniFi G3 Dome Cameras
1x UniFi G3 Flex Camera

to:

It's using around 10W less power than the previous configuration and its quieter being passively cooled. I've added a solar powered extraction fan, and a separate powered temperature monitoring module that will activate two intake and one exhaust fan if needed.

I'm also running the following rack mounted equipment in there:

Synology RS816 NAS Drive
BitScope Quattro Raspberry Pi blade
Cyberpower 600VA UPS with Remote Management Adapter

I'm running six Raspberry Pis, ranging from an original Model B hosting FlightRadar24, an EmonPi power monitor on a Model 3B, and on the BitScope blade I have a model 4B, model 3B plus, model 3B and a model 2B all running Docker and various containers hosting some applications 24x7 along with being a test bed for testing some simple micro-services prototypes.

Below is a quick demonstration of the UniFi AR feature: youtube.com/watch?v=0dlB-UAhTyw

Helping create an Interactive Wall for MIT

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In summer 2019, the MD of Two Lines Meet contacted me and asked if I could assist them with the software and hardware design and development of an interactive wall for MIT's Campaign for a Better World.

My brief was to gather all of the interaction data from various hardware devices on the wall, and then build and transmit commands to a projection mapping software package called Resolume.

The hardware specification (shown in the image below) included:

3x Bare Conductive Capacitive Touch Boards
4x Arduino Uno Boards with various sensors attached, i.e. 3x RFID readers, a Magnetometer, and a pull-cord on/off switch
2x USB SpinTrak Precision Rotary controls that produced a single dimensional mouse input
1x USB Microphone (for the clap sensor)
2x powered USB Hubs
1x Intel NUC PC
2x Optoma Ultra Short Throw projectors

The software application itself was written as a C# WPF application using .NET Framework 4.8. Each wall section was written as a separate task, so they were all completely independent of each other. This was needed as multiple users could be interacting with different parts of the wall at any one time.

It interacted with both USB and USB/Serial hardware devices. There were several lower level pieces of code that needed to work well together, including the serial port handler and multiple mouse input devices. The latter required some Win32 calls to be able to select which mouse input device data was to be read from. Each task subscribed to the relevant input device handler in order to receive the appropriate events. That task then translated the data and sent instructions to Resolume in order to play the appropriate projection map.

Communication from the application to Resolume took the form of OSC packets. OSC is a networking protocol sent over UDP. A combination of open-source libraries and proprietary code was used to tweak this to our requirements.

A simple WPF GUI was created to indicate the current status of each task and also to allow some minor tweaks as the application was running, like adjusting the USB microphone sensitivity to cater for changes in background noise levels throughout the event.

The first event was hosted at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London, and we've since been out to Stamford, Connecticut with it. Unfortunately, due to COVID, the MIT Campaign for a Better World tour has been put on hold.

Here's a video of the wall in action at the London Event: youtube.com/watch?v=Xov5VAHRwZk

Working with a Winning Team

Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In my career I've always focused on my passion of technology and applied it to everywhere I've worked. I made a choice not to focus on one specific business area, and instead try to gain a broad experience from many diverse businesses. Most of the places that I've worked have generally been a positive experience, with the usual caveats of politics and red tape.

One place in particular that I enjoyed working was at Mercedes AMG HPP, writing software to support the engineers for the Mercedes F1 Team. What struck me here at Mercedes, was the passion that the entire company showed towards the business itself. Everyone I worked with was dedicated to the cause and loved their job.

What was also great was the fact that the business saw what the I.T. teams brought to the table, making meetings very productive. This allowed us to design and plan our projects well and deliver performant solutions that satisfied the requirements.

The best part though was the win. When Mercedes won a race, it felt like we all had won the race. I actually felt like the software I developed there really had contributed to that win in a small way. It's not often you get to feel your results as a software developer in a way that was as tangible as that. Good times!