About
What we build, and why
ZOLB is a technology company I established to develop and provide practical software, technology services, and digital products across five areas: automation, IoT, web, desktop, and mobile. I take projects from concept to completion myself, which lets me stay close to the work, respond quickly when requirements change, and make sure every part of a solution works together. Here’s what that looks like.
Automation
Most of this is n8n — wiring up the workflows that quietly eat a business’s time (a form that should trigger three other things, data that has to move between two systems that don’t talk to each other). Where a workflow needs actual judgment rather than a fixed rule, I build agentic steps on top of it using Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, or Grok, depending on which model is the right fit for the specific job — not a default I reach for regardless of the task.
IoT
Raspberry Pi and Arduino work — projects that need to sense or control something in the physical world, not just push data around. This is also where the Raspberry Pi 4B simulator comes from. I won’t re-explain the product here — if you want the tutorials that came out of building it, they’re in Learn.
Web Development
Next.js and React for most new work, the MERN stack or Laravel where a project’s own constraints call for it, and Python on the backend when that’s the better fit for the actual problem — this site and the simulator are both built this way.
Desktop Applications
Windows Forms in C# for native Windows software, and Java — JFrames built with WindowBuilder — where a cross-platform desktop app is the right call instead.
Mobile Applications
Flutter or React Native, chosen per project rather than defaulting to one — both ship to iOS and Android from a single codebase, and which one fits better depends on the app.
I built the ZOLB Raspberry Pi Simulator after seeing a recurring problem in the classroom: not every student had access to a Raspberry Pi or the other hardware needed to practice outside the laboratory. Students who could not regularly access the hardware had fewer opportunities to experiment, troubleshoot their code, and reinforce what they learned in class. I wanted to create a free and accessible way for students to practice Raspberry Pi programming and experiment with GPIO without needing physical hardware every time.
The tutorials in Learn come directly from that teaching experience — including the mistakes I watched students make most often.
