An install of Home Assistant to control all of my smart home devices as well and running Node Red for smart home automations.
My name is Stuart Haire, I am 28 years old from Bangor, Northern Ireland. I have graduated from Ulster University in 2016 with a 2:1 in Computing Science.
I am currently employed at TRG Screen in Belfast, Northern Ireland and enjoy working there on a daily basis.
I have a passion for developing and enjoy learning different programming languages. I first encountered my passion for computers at a young age when I enjoyed gaming on them, since then I have always shown a keen interest in learning more about them. During my school years I always chose IT related subjects. This continued right through secondary school during GCSEs and A levels. After this, I started my degree where I first learnt about programming.
The first language I encountered was Java, from here I continued to develop my programming knowledge through multiple modules throughout my course in University. I have also built my own PC therefore have learnt about the many components inside the computer.
In my free time I enjoy playing golf, where I am a member of a local golf club. I also enjoy developing projects, watching movies, listening to music and socialising with my friends.
TRG Screen/Axon is a data compliance platform reduces your market data compliance risk.
I work as a DevOps Engineer where I work closely with the development team to improve the deployment process and setup any new services they may require. I am responsible many services hosted in Azure, ensuring services are uninterrupted.
My working hours are from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. I am able to WFH or in the office as much or little as desired. I do however go into the office usually 2-3 days a week.
At 28 years of age I am quite proud of my current employment path and have gained a large amount of experience from all the jobs I have been enployed in. These have ranged in many different ways and have helped to bring out many different qualities I have and helped to develop many skills which I have found very useful.
I moved to iGame Media under TUPE from Perform Group at the start of August 2018. I work with the same platform as I did in Perform and therefore know it quite well. I worked the same hours as before and also still take part working on call shifts. There are were three members of the team that I worked with and expanded my workload to their existing products at iGame Media
I worked in a team of four people which managed live streaming services. I was responsible for assisting the my team, ensuring live services are uninterrupted and run smoothly on a daily basis. I worked from 9am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday. I also took part in working on call shifts with the other members of our team where we are available for 7 days of the week as it was a 24 hour company.
I was a customer adviser at my local Argos store. Here I have many different roles which include serving customers, picking products, putting away deliveries and general shop assistant work. During my time here I have developed many skills which have allowed me to develop as a person. I have become more outgoing and about to communicate better with customers both face to face and on the phone.
Although as short time of employment, due to closing down, this was my first job and got me some money for basic needs as well as learning to drive. This played a key role in my life as this gave me more confidence in interviews to try and obtain another job. I had several different duties while working here including stacking shelves, serving customers and cleaning the shop.
During my free time I like to work on different projects. I do this either to benefit me or to improve my skills as I like a challenge of learning something different. Below are some of the projects that I have developed.
In the upcoming weeks I plan to move all of my projects onto GitHub as a way of best practice.
An install of Home Assistant to control all of my smart home devices as well and running Node Red for smart home automations.
A quiz game for Android based devices, the application includes multiple rounds in which the player can build up a score to have a final score.
A RIA that uses JavaScript to create a dynamic webpage that would not need to redirect to each individual webpage which usually happens today.
An Android application that is useful for employees at Argos stores to find the check character based on the aisle and shelf location.
A small website run using node on my internal network to provide quick links to internal tools.
I went through education from 4 years old until 22 years old. During this time I attended Primary School, Bangor Academy and Sixth Form College and Ulster University.
View GradesBangor Academy and Sixth Form College
September 2005 - June 2012Here I completed my full school career from the age of 12 until 18 years old. During this time I completeted my GCSEs and my A Levels, where I obtained 9 GCSEs, 2 A Levels and a BTEC, all with high successfull grades.
View GradesUlster University
September 2012 - June 2016I studied a Computing Science course over a period of 4 years with a 1 year placement. This consisted of several different modules including Web Development, Java Programming, Android Development and several more.
In my house I have a large range of devices and equipment where I using these and working with them to make my setup even better. Most of the projects and setup outlined below are a work in progress and part of a larger scale project. I enjoy spending time to develop more and more features that will in turn benefit me in one way or another.
I have many devices that I use in many different ways, I will take each in turn and explain what it is used for.
I have a 4k LG TV running WebOS, this was been a great investment and will future proof me for many years to come as 4k is starting now to become much more popular. Although most of the TV that I watch is not in 4k, it is upscaled therefore is noticeably better quality than my previous 720p 32 inch TV.
More recently I purchased the new Xbox One X and have used my external 2TB HDD to store my games on so I could easily transition from the old console to the new console. I have enjoyed playing games in 4k and making full potential of my 4k TV.
During summer 2015 I decided to create my own custom PC to my desired specs, exactly how I wanted it. This meant a lot of planning to ensure I kept inside my budget and getting the best parts for the best prices. I then had to ensure as I was deciding on parts if they would be compatiable with each other. I do plan to updrate these over time.
Specification:
I have several Raspberry Pi's which I constantly do different things with and like to try different project on. However I this Raspberry Pi used for running PiHole DNS using docker.
I have my home network set up to use this as its primary DNS, the reason for this is that with Pi Hole queries can be blocked, this I find incredibly useful for blocking annoying adverts on websites. I support that some websites require ads in order to function, however many companies continue to use adverts even with premium services or bombard their webpage with adverts to the point its unreadable.
I also use this as I can set up my own internal DNS records by modifying the hosts file on this Raspberry Pi. For example Home Assistant runs on my Raspberry Pi and to access the web interface I created a record for it so I didn't have to always remember the IP address.
On this Pi I also installed OpenVPN server using docker so I can have VPN access to my home network from anywhere in the world. This has proven useful as I set it up so that I can connect to my home VPN and use my PiHole DNS.
I made a plex media server once before and ran it on a Raspberry Pi, however this time I used an old spare computer to run it as the Pi was not powerful enough to run some file types, due to its lack of processing power
This computer runs Ubuntu and has a total 2.5TB storage for the media. The reason why I created this was to store any Movies or TV series I purchased on this as a local point to play from, this was useful as I could play from Plex anywhere in my home and multiple people could watch the same or different things at one time.
I have since updated this and now it runs docker containers for Plex, Sonarr, Radarr and some Plex monitoring software. This has been a great update as now it is easier to restart, update and maintain docker containers.
This section I have included anything I deem to be part of my on going smart home project.
I recently purchased 3x Philips Hue Colour and Dimmable Bulbs which I use in three seperate rooms in my house. Along with this I purchased an Amazon Echo in order to be able to speak to Alexa and turn on and off my lights even easier, this has proven even easier this way. I also used one of my Raspberry Pi's to run Home Assistant, this is a very powerful tool and I have only just scratched the surface of what it can actually do. So far I have linked my Hue bulbs to turn them own at sunset, but only if there is someone home for certain rooms and also to turn off if no one is home between certain times.
In the future, I want to have Alexa be able to turn on and off my TV, Xbox, Computer and many other ideas. Due to limitations of my TVs NIC powering off this only works for a short period of time after turnning off which is disappointing. I also would like to purchase a Hue Strip and more bulbs.
A few years ago I purchased a VPS to run my website on and I also created a VPN here too. I use this VPS mainly to host my website on, I also own this domain. I built my website back during my time at University as a way to act as a porfolio for my projects and a little bit about me, since when I have changed its design a number of times and updated it accordingly.
I use the VPN most of the time as a way to have my traffic encrypted, many people will think that means I have something to hide, this isn't the case. I do this as a way of limiting as much as possible the government can view about my internet habits. This is also one of the reasons I have my website certified.
On this VPS I also run Plakt in docker which enables webhooks from Plex to Trakt in order to keep a full watched list of TV and Movies.
A small gallery of some of the places I have travelled to throughout my life. I will update this as I travel to more locations!
Over the last few years I have travelled to many places! I travelled to London with my family as a family holiday, I have travelled to Benidorm twice with my friends as a summer getaway and I also travelled to Croatia for a stag do for two of my friends. I travelled to Italy as part of a Northern Ireland away game in San Marino where we landed in Rome, stayed here one night. Then travelled up to Rimini where we stayed here for two nights and then travelled to Milan to fly home. In 2018 I travelled to Benidorm again with some friends and also was in Austria, Slovika, Hungary and Bosnia. In 2020 just before the Covid-19 Pandemic UK lockdown I was in Krakow, this trip was cut short as we had to get an emergency flight home due to lockdown restrictions in Poland.
As an addition to my travel photographs above I have world map that shows all the countries I have visted throughout my life!
I will update this as I travel to new countries!
Feel free to contact for any reason! I will typically reply within two working days.
Stuart Haire
BangorThis is currently under development - Email website@stuarthaire.com
