The Team

Robert Savage, Project Founder, Architect, Lead Developer.

Principal Software Architect/Engineer. Consultant, technology enthusiast, entrepreneur, open source contributor, technology blogger. Founder at shadeBlue, LLC and SavageSoftware, LLC. Robert has a more than 20 year career working in the professional audio visual and home/commercial automation industry and an extensive background in developing technology solutions with a special focus on home automation and hardware/firmware/software integration. In 2012, Robert created the Pi4J project which provides Java developers an easy to use Java library enabling access to low-level I/O functionality (GPIO, I2C, SPI, Serial, etc.) of embedded systems like the Raspberry Pi. I created Pi4J to empower Java programmers to get involved with embedded platforms such as the Raspberry Pi and provide an easy to use and accessible Java-centric object-oriented library enabling control of real world (physical) “things”. Pi4J V.2 brings an entirely new and modern approach to Java I/O programming for embedded systems. I’m excited to get V.2 released and see what additional creative projects emerge.
Frank Delporte, Project organization, Documenter, Developer.

Java and Raspberry Pi-enthousiast, blogger on webtechie.be and author of the book “Getting Started with Java on Raspberry Pi”. Technical writer at Azul. Lead coach CoderDojo in Ieper, Belgium. Software developer with more than 25 years of experience in video, multimedia, technical project management, digital signage and (web) programming. I’m a strong believer in the power and fun of Java on the Raspberry Pi. My goal is to make it as easy as possible to get started for new and experienced Java developers who want to start there first hardware experiment. That was the reason I wrote a book about this subject and share my experiments on my blog and GitHub. Pi4J V.2 brings a lot of improvements to an already great project, and - just one example - the use of the BCM pin numbers will make it even a lot easier to use the GPIO’s. That’s why I join this great team to assist in delivering this V.2 and extend it further so we can bring even more Java to the Raspberry Pi.
Robert von Burg aka “Eitch”, Developer, Releaser.

As lead developer for strolch.li we use Raspberry Pi as our platform to connect with products, and to implement a PLC in Java. The Pi4J project allows us to encapsulate the low level aspects of communicating with the hardware, and stay in our preferred choice. The strolch.li/plc.html project allows us to also stay in the same DSL for writing server applications, as well as communicating with low level devices. Since I love open source projects, it felt natural to me to start investing time in the Pi4J projects to assist in the further development.
Thomas Aarts (aka Tom), Developer, Creating IC examples.

My previous work entailed a decade in Alaska involving HF through Microwave communication and airport Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) DME NDB VASI. The next decade was centered around telephony. Working for ‘ROLM’ I was a software engineer working on the CBX series of switches. Most years in assembler using the DG instruction set. Later years on the larger CBX that used a company designed compiler much like ‘C’ on a much different instruction set. The last two decades I worked within an IBM lab. At the start I worked the AS400, a mid to large size server. Initially development of software at the user interface, above the MI. After a few years I moved in the firmware stack at the time all the servers, mid-mainframe, changed to using the IBM RISC processor. After some years in the firmware stack I moved to a newly formed simulation team. This entailed developing a simulation of the entire central processor complex (CPC) or Central Electronic Complex (CEC) to enable the firmware stack to boot and the partitions to boot on top and run. So after a long time working just above the hardware or simulating the hardware I found the Pi4j project of interest. After its’ use for some sensors and displays I am spending more time learning its capability and if possible offer something to the project. After that by decade history rundown I should add I retired.
Muhammad Hashim aka “mhashim6”, Developer, Focus on Kotlin.

I’m a Software Engineer at Instabug, Writer & Blogger at The Upside-Down Trees & The Unhappy Folk. I go by “Timeless, Placeless” As it better reflects the crafts I do; my art and interests; and my life. I’ve joined the team to bring Kotlin to Pi4J; The project that brought the JVM to the Raspberry Pi.
Alexander Liggesmeyer, Student Worker at Max Planck Institute for Informatics, personal website.

Alexander created the GpioD Provider for release 2.5.0 to make Pi4J compatible with the Raspberry Pi 5. He also loves drinking cocktails with the CocktailPi as a result.