AYUSH~KADALI

Ayush Kadali

I write firmware that has flown in space.

Embedded · Flight software · Edge AI — Pune, India

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The STeRG-P1.0 flight unit, the payload this firmware flew on

About

I’m a Computer Science (AI & Data Science) student at MIT-WPU Pune, class of 2027, and the Software Subsystem Lead at STeRG, our student space technology group, where I lead 7–10 engineers building flight software.

I got here bottom-up: started in core computer science, got pulled into hardware, then firmware, then embedded Linux, and now I keep finding myself curious about the layers underneath — kernels, compilers, the machinery everything else stands on. The work I’m proudest of is firmware I wrote that flew on the POEM-4 platform aboard ISRO’s PSLV-C60, and the CubeSat flight software my team is building now on NASA cFS.

Outside the lab it’s space, Formula 1, and an unreasonable interest in semiconductors — especially where the AI and neural-chip wave is taking them. I’m looking for an embedded, semiconductor, or edge-AI internship or industry-semester role starting July 2026.

$ cat /proc/ayush/status name: Ayush Kadali role: Software Lead, STeRG focus: CubeSat FSW — NASA cFS / Yocto degree: B.Tech CSE (AI & DS), MIT-WPU year: 3 of 4 intr: space · F1 · neural silicon state: R (running) next: industry semester, Jul 2026
procfs, mostly accurateLIVE

The POEM-4 payload

FLOWN

Our student team put a payload on POEM-4 — the orbital platform on the spent fourth stage of ISRO’s PSLV‑C60, launched Dec 30, 2024. I wrote the attitude-determination firmware that flew on it.

0.91 attitude correlation
ComputeSTM32H7 · ARM Cortex-M7
RTOSFreeRTOS — deterministic state machine, ISR-safe queues
SensingMEMS IMU over I2C, register-level drivers
InterfacesUART telemetry · I2C sensor bus · RS-485 inter-board
QualificationEMI/EMC, vibration, thermal-vacuum, shock
PlatformPOEM-4 orbital platform, ISRO PSLV-C60 launch vehicle
HardwareOur own custom PCBs, designed and built in-house
Read the full story
thermal-vacuum chamber, qualification campaign
thermal-vacuum chamber, qualification campaignTVAC
exploded CAD view of the payload assembly
exploded CAD view of the payload assemblyCAD
payload mounted on the shaker table for vibration testing
payload mounted on the shaker table for vibration testingVIBE

Project index

POEM-4 Payload Firmware FLOWN Attitude-determination firmware on our student payload, flown on the POEM-4 platform aboard ISRO's PSLV-C60 (Dec 30, 2024). STM32H7, FreeRTOS, 0.91 attitude correlation in orbit-representative testing. CubeSat Flight Software IN DEVELOPMENT I lead the software team for our university's first CubeSat — NASA cFS on embedded Linux (STM32MP257 OBC) plus FreeRTOS and bare-metal subsystem boards, in development and targeting launch in 2027. CanSat & Model Rocketry Flight Software EXCELLENT GRADE I led the software team for two IN-SPACe student competitions — a CanSat, and a model rocket carrying a second CanSat as its deployable payload — built on a shared dual-MCU avionics stack (3 of 4 PCBs common). Marine Organism Detection NATIONAL WINNER Real-time marine organism classification from live microscopy video on a Raspberry Pi. National Winner, Smart India Hackathon 2025, Hardware Edition (Government of India). SwarmOTA RESEARCH · IN PROGRESS A gossip-based peer-to-peer protocol for decentralized firmware-over-the-air updates across IoT microcontrollers — BitTorrent-style rarest-first chunk selection adapted for ESP32 and Pico W. Targeting a research paper. ArduCAM Driver on STM32H7 COMPLETED An SPI camera driver written from scratch with DMA double-buffering, FatFS SD logging, and simultaneous UART streaming — frame timing validated on a logic analyzer. Q-Force CACC 1ST PLACE Hybrid classical + quantum-inspired graph ML system for cross-asset financial markets — MAPE cut from 7.8% to 4.9%, crash recall lifted from 68% to 82%. 1st place, CACC Coder's Arena 2025. Anchor COMPLETED A unified terminal for embedded and remote systems — one browser interface for every console in the lab, whether it's a board on USB serial or a server over SSH, reachable from any device on the network. Keystroke Analysis COMPLETED Behavioral-biometric user identification from typing dynamics — custom data collection, five classifier families compared, and a rule-based expert system making the final authentication call. OpenEnv Firmware Debug Environment COMPLETED A reinforcement-learning environment where AI agents debug realistic firmware faults on a simulated ARM Cortex-M — five scenarios with register-level STM32 modeling and cascading failures.
Flight heritage — POEM-4 / PSLV-C60 · 2024National Winner — Smart India Hackathon 2025, Hardware Edition · 20253rd Place — Ciphathon CTF, national · 20261st Place — CACC Coder's Arena 2025 · 2025

Kernel log

2026-03-28 3RD 3rd Place — Ciphathon CTF, national 24-hour Jeopardy-style CTF, 50+ teams from VIT, COEP, NIT Goa, VJTI, PES, DJSCE, IIIT Pune
2025-12-12 WINNER National Winner — Smart India Hackathon 2025, Hardware Edition Government of India's national innovation challenge; real-time marine organism classification on Raspberry Pi
2025-09 TOP 24 Top 24 — SegFault Compiler Hackathon @ IICT 2025 Sponsored by NVIDIA, Google, Qualcomm
2025 1ST 1st Place — CACC Coder's Arena 2025 Data Design & Web Development track, with Q-Force
2025 (C) Copyright registration — HEAL-ID Healthcare identity system, Copyright Office, Government of India
2024-12-30 FLOWN Flight heritage — POEM-4 / PSLV-C60 Attitude-determination firmware on our payload, flown on the POEM-4 platform aboard ISRO's PSLV-C60
2024 1ST 1st Prize — Pune city-level coding competition Competitive programming
2023 1ST IoT project recognition 1st Prize, MIT-WPU IoT Exhibition (2023) and IET IoT Special Certificate (2024), same project
The team with the winner's cheque at the Smart India Hackathon 2025 Grand Finale
Smart India Hackathon 2025 Grand Finale — the winning teamSIH
Smart India Hackathon 2025 winner certificate
winner certificate, Ministry of Education, Government of IndiaPROOF

Memory map

.text 0x0800_0000 r-x

strong — hands-on production use

Embedded C: ISR design, volatile/concurrency correctness, register-level access, custom linker scripts · FreeRTOS: tasks, queues, mutexes, ISRs, timers, timing determinism · ARM targets: Cortex-M7/M4/M33, Cortex-A35 — STM32 (MP257, H7, F4, U5), ESP32, RP2040, Raspberry Pi · Peripherals & protocols: GPIO, ADC, timers, PWM, DMA, interrupts; UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, Ethernet, RS-485; XBee, LoRa, GSM/4G · Bring-up & debug: JTAG/SWD, ST-Link, GDB, logic analyzer, oscilloscope, multimeter · Sensor fusion: IMU, GPS, barometer · Python: ML, tooling, backend, test automation

.data 0x2000_0000 rw-

proficient — working use, still being written to

Embedded Linux: Yocto, U-Boot, device-tree, GCC ARM cross-compilation, sysfs userspace drivers · NASA cFS flight-software framework · Applied ML: GATs, Kalman/particle filters, GARCH, variational quantum circuits, OpenCV, RL environment design, edge inference on ARM · Backend/data: FastAPI, AsyncIO, MySQL, real-time streaming · C++, Bash, Make, CMake, Git/GitHub

.ext 0x6000_0000 r--

familiar — mapped external, fetched on demand

Distributed-systems concepts: gossip protocols, P2P chunk distribution (SwarmOTA) · Reading LLVM IR; compiler interest · Linux kernel architecture (working understanding)

.rodata 0x081C_0000 r--

read-only interests — burned in at the fab

space — the industry, not just the aesthetic · Formula 1 & motorsport engineering · semiconductors — the AI/neural-chip wave excites me most · the layers under everything: kernels, compilers, silicon

linker map convention: sections placed at true proficiency

Establish link

Looking for an embedded / semiconductor / edge-AI team to build with. Industry-semester internship from July 2026 — or just talk shop.

mailto ayushkadali [at] gmail [dot] com
github github.com/Ayush-Kadali
linkedin linkedin.com/in/ayush-kadali
localhost Pune, India
QR code linking to this site
met me at a conference? scan to keep the link