HDH

Herb Hall

Controls Tech · Maker · Navy Veteran

Journeyman Controls Technician at Cornell University. I build things—building automation systems by day, home lab infrastructure and electronics projects by night. 29 years in the Navy Seabees taught me there's no problem you can't solve if you're willing to figure it out.

Projects

Modular network monitoring and management platform. Learning Go while building something useful for my home network.

Claude Skills Markdown

Custom skills for Claude AI including requirements generator with MoSCoW prioritization. Synced across Claude.ai and VS Code.

Terminal-based Matrix digital rain effect built with crossterm. Because sometimes you just want to watch green characters fall.

Home Lab

UnRAID server with Home Assistant, Plex, Immich. ESP32 sensor network via ESPHome. Tailscale VPN. Proxmox for LLM testing.

Experience

2012 – Present
Journeyman Controls Tech / Foreperson
Cornell University · Facilities AC/R Controls Shop
Lead corrective maintenance for State and Endowed campus building automation. Automated Logic, Alerton, Johnson, Argus systems. UA Local 81.
1983 – 2012
Construction Electrician First Class (E-6)Retired
US Navy Seabees
29 years including combat deployments to Kandahar AFB (2010) and Camp Virginia, Kuwait (2005-06). Operations, QC, electrical, network admin, detachment leadership. 4 Navy Achievement Medals.
2008 – 2012
Shift Mechanic
Cornell University
Emergency first responder for after-hours maintenance across all university assets.
1995 – 2002
Co-Founder / CTO
CQ Services, Inc.
Built an ISP from scratch. Web development (Perl, ASP, SQL Server), network engineering, systems admin, customer support.

About

Military Service

Retired Navy Seabee with 29 years of service. The Seabees taught me to assess, plan, and execute—skills I use every day whether I'm troubleshooting building controls or debugging code.

  • Kandahar AFB, Afghanistan (2010)
  • Camp Virginia, Kuwait (2005-06)
  • 4 Navy Achievement Medals
  • NMCB-21 Detachment OIC

Current Interests

Home Automation ESP32 / Electronics 3D Printing Self-Hosted Infrastructure Go Programming Motorcycles PC Gaming