eike hein
Welcome! I'm a software engineer and architect located in Berlin, Germany.
I'm passionate about building organizations, systems engineering, user interfaces, end-users and open source.
I work at MBition and am Vice President of KDE e.V.
I've lived in Germany and South Korea, and understand English, German and Korean.
Below are some of the things I'm helping to build.
Projects
MBUX
- My job 💪
- System
- Embedded
Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) is the infotainment system in Mercedes-Benz passenger cars. I work on MBUX as Chief Architect at MBition, the Mercedes-Benz software hub. Our architecture team is responsible for operating system and platform software in use on multiple edge compute devices in the car, driving a multitude of screens, cameras and other I/O periphery. Together this distributed system implements many key driving, connectivity and entertainment functions.
Plasma is a set of high-quality device user interfaces for PCs and mobile/embedded, based on a unified technology stack. I've implemented many of the primary elements of Plasma's desktop user interface as lead developer, as well as underlying backends and libraries used in every Plasma edition.
KDE is an international technology community developing device user interfaces, apps, frameworks, dev tools and project infrastructure. I've contributed to KDE's projects in various roles since 2005. At KDE I've been a lead developer, software architect, project maintainer, UI designer, sys admin, student mentor, writer and more.
KDE e.V. is a non-profit association supporting the KDE community in organizational, legal and financial matters. It funds infrastructure, events and travel. I've been a member since 2007, and Vice President and treasurer on the board of directors since 2017.
As CTO of one of Valve's contractors on the Steam Deck, I was responsible for organizing our contributions to its Desktop mode feature, based on KDE Plasma. PoC code I wrote for app lifecycle management on the Deck lead to a new standardized mechanism for app launching and resource management on the Linux desktop. I also wrote some of the initial code for Plasma's resource monitoring framework and the System Monitor app on this project.
My little IoT/embedded skill-sharpener: A bookshelf with individually controllable LED backlighting, by way of an embedded touchscreen, a phone companion app and a Philips Hue integration. In addition to assembling the hardware bits this hobby project involved building a responsive and network-cabable embedded/Android/PC touch GUI, a custom SPI-based LED paint engine, adding a HTTP REST API, programming an MCU to perform PWM display backlight control and more.
Kirogi is a ground control application for drones. It supports a variety of off-the-shelf consumer gear and DIY drone models. Available for Android smartphones and PCs. Kirogi is named after the Korean word for wild geese, who rank among the fastest flyers in the animal kingdom.
Qt is a software framework for building applications and user interfaces. I contribute to Qt's code and, through KDE e.V., have helped to run the Qt World Summit conference. I am involved in regulating Qt's open source licensing via KDE's stake in the Free Qt Foundation, which has the mission of securing the availability of the Qt toolkit for the development of open source software.
Wayland
- Tech standard
- Open Source
Wayland is a family of display server protocols used to implement windowing systems and address a variety of graphics composition use cases. I have contributed to standardized Wayland protocols and, alongside others, for a time represented the KDE community in the governance of the Wayland project. I've worked on implementing Wayland in both Plasma and MBUX.
TJWG
- Organization
- Human rights
The Transitional Justice Working Group is a Seoul-based NGO focusing on transitional justice mechanisms in the world’s most repressive regimes. It has done substantial work on geographically mapping human rights abuses in North Korea based on hundreds of interviews, using open source technology. I support the working group as an IT/technology advisor.
Yakuake
- App
- Open Source
- Past project
Yakuake is a hotkey-activated, drop-down terminal emulator for Linux desktops, in the vein of the command console in the video game Quake. I was the maintainer and lead developer of Yakuake for many years.
Konversation
- App
- Open Source
- Past project
Konversation is a classic PC group chat app for the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol. I was the maintainer and lead developer of Konversation for many years.
