Designing Google's First IoT Developer Kit

In 2015, I co-founded Zarmada — an IoT and AI-focused vendor operating across the Google and Microsoft ecosystems. One of our first projects was designing Google's first IoT Developer Kit in partnership with Seeed Studios.

Bridging Hardware and Cloud

At the time, IoT was still largely an industrial concept. Consumer developers had Arduino and Raspberry Pi, but there was no cohesive developer experience that connected hardware sensors to cloud AI. That's what we built.

The kit gave developers a physical starting point: sensors, connectivity modules, and a board that talked natively to Google's cloud services. It was designed to lower the barrier from "I have an idea for a connected device" to "I have a working prototype sending data to the cloud."

Keynote-Level Demonstrations

At Zarmada, I also developed keynote-level demos for executive leadership — the kind of high-stakes, backstage work where you're building the live demo that goes on stage in front of thousands. This skill became central to my work with Microsoft in the years that followed.

The Pattern

Zarmada reinforced a pattern I'd seen at Intergen and TacPlans: the most impactful work happens at the intersection of hardware, software, and narrative. It's not enough to build something that works — you have to make people understand why it matters.