Tobias Jahnke
Principal Software Engineer
Microchip Technology Inc.
Tell us a bit about yourself – what made you want to get into technology? How did you get involved in automotive? In AGL?
I was always fascinated by robotics, so I decided to study mechatronic engineering. During my study I recognized very soon that software engineering is my favorite engineering discipline. When I was starting then as an engineer, I took the chance to develop medical software for controlling interactive operating rooms. After some time, I had the opportunity to work for Microchip on automotive infotainment systems which was a great step for me. I was involved in AGL when Microchip decided to provide UNICENS (Unified Centralized Network Stack) as a free open source software stack to control INICnet™ technology based network nodes.
What are you working on within AGL? Can you sum up your experience so far?
I am working on the integration of Microchip’s INICnet technology components. INICnet technology is a 50 Mbps automotive networking technology on unshielded twisted pair (UTP) simplifying audio-video streaming and providing a separate ethernet channel.
Based on the AGL application framework, we are providing the UNICENS bindings which allow to setup the network and to control remote network nodes. I am maintaining the API and extending wherever it is required to control new network devices or to interface multimedia frameworks. I also participated in several AGL F2F meetings and CES integration sessions, which are very helpful to ensure that every part is in place and can be used by further services, such as AGL voice-service, Alexa Voice Service (AVS) or PipeWire.
Beyond getting in touch with the great AGL community, this integration work also proves impressive teamwork within Microchip, bringing heads together between hardware, software and application developers.
What advice would you offer other developers or software engineers interested in getting started with AGL?
I think that the AGL developer website is a very good entry point. There are guides for building images and developing applications. The community is very friendly and when you are running into issues you may simply ask on the mailing list.
In addition, it can be very helpful to meet the developer’s community in an AGL face to face meeting. Besides catching the project news, it is also useful to know what different developers are working on.
What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?
Following some principles is always very good advice. I would recommend the following ones to start with: KISS – Keep it simple, stupid. Never rely on an API which is not documented. Source code which is not hosted on a VCS does not exist.
What technology could you not live without?
I think that the usage of VCS, CI, issue trackers and online collaboration tools are essential to meet our daily software development challenges.
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In the AGL Developer Showcase series, we talk to developers and software engineers to learn more about the work they are doing with AGL and open source. If you are currently involved in AGL or a user of AGL and would like to be featured in the Developer Showcase, please email us.
