ESP32, BLE, and embedded firmware
The battery dies in three days. The BLE link drops. A sensor driver does not work and nobody left on the team wrote it. Olivabot B.V. is hired for that — ESP32, nRF, the model that has to run on the same chip, and the case the board lives in. Work is remote only from a laptop. Email services@olivabot.com.
- Battery life. Sleep states, duty cycling, when to wake the radio. The most common reason people write.
- Radios. BLE, Wi-Fi, and LoRaWAN — pairing that fails, ranges that disappoint, outdoor nodes that have to survive a Dutch winter.
- Drivers. I2C, SPI, UART, CAN. Getting a new sensor to talk, or an old one to stop lying.
- Somebody else’s firmware. JTAG and SWD, an oscilloscope, and an undocumented codebase.
C, C++, ARM Cortex-M, ESP32, nRF, FreeRTOS and bare metal, Zephyr where it fits.
On-device AI
A camera that has to label a frame with no network. A robot that has to decide the next move when the radio is down. A battery-powered node that reads sensors and acts — sleep, wake, alarm — without sending the raw data anywhere. Tiny models on the microcontroller; slightly larger ones on a camera module next to the board. Quantised, measured on the hardware you will ship.
Photos that can live on a server are software. This is the model that has to fit next to the sensors. Confidence scores and an explicit “unclear”, not invented precision. If it will not fit the chip or the battery, we say that before the work starts.
On-device movement classification on a finger-ring sensor for Madglove. A feasibility study on on-board canopy vision. Basil Bot: a cheap camera on a printed arm, a model that finds a leaf, then joint commands from that image.
CAD
Firmware usually runs into a physical problem: the board needs a case, the sensor needs a mount, the thing needs to survive outdoors. We design parts, mounts, and enclosures as files you own — print them yourself or send them to a manufacturer. We will sit in design-for-manufacturing calls with your supplier if your team is not technical.
Where this has been proven
A battery, a microcontroller, and a sensor on a finger ring for Madglove. Always-on LoRaWAN soil probes for Mycofarming. A printed 4-axis arm for Basil Bot. Firmware and battery budgets for Gibbon Bot, still in the lab.
Contact
Email services@olivabot.com.
To services@olivabot.com. NDA first if you prefer.