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About Me
Early Life
Welcome all! My name is Peter Kempf. I was born and raised in Maryville, Missouri, a D2 college town of about 12,000 people. There, I had a great childhood filled with friends, family, and a lot of hard work. My family did everything diy ranging from siding, roofing, building a garage, painting, window replacement, etc.. I also spent some time working and fooling around on the farm.
College
I moved out of Missouri to attend school at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. There, I obtained my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. I worked as a Systems Integrator intern at Huffman Engineering. Also in college, I worked as an undergraduate researcher in the Nebraska Nanoscale Energy Engineering lab. There, I researched and constructed a Fabry-Perot interferometer to measure nanoscale displacements. The FPI aided in precise research of evanescent waves and their abilities to amplify energy for solar applications.
Furthermore, college exposed me to Arduino and the world of microprocessors. It is a world of limitless imagination and was furthered by my internship with industrial controls. There, I utilized PLCs to control and monitor complex infrastructures. I used Arduinos in college to control a 4DOF robot (fire extinguishinator 5000), an inverted pendulum, and a rc car. At the internship I programmed an Allen-Bradley PLC to control single use bioreactors to manufacture animal vaccines, some great experiences!
Post College
Since college, my girlfriend Kenzie and I moved out to Denver to pursue a career and higher education. I got a job at HDR, an engineering consulting firm, as an instrumentation and controls engineer in training (title after passing your FE and not yet your PE). In that position we were a mix of designers, system integrators, and operation technologists (OT). I worked mainly for the national parks services for the water and wastewater sites in the Grand Canyon.
Eventually I moved to Building Automation Systems (BAS) for the developing datacenters group, but after months of training and a lack of projects, I left to get back into the industrial controls industry.
Consulting
In the meantime, while working at HDR, a colleague needed someone capable of programming Arduino for his startup business. I started working for him and his buddy’s business Agriburbia as a controls engineer consultant. I will make a couple blogs about my programming of the ESP32-S3 Firebeetle 2 and a Raspberry Pi integrated with Caspio.
Other Silly Ideas
AGAIN in the meantime, I had a dream to start my own treehouse business. I wanted to buy some 40 acres of forested mountain. Build some treehouses and trick them and the land out with contraptions like draw bridges, trapped doors, moving ladders, a mountain coaster, etc. I did open the LLC, but with the plans to move out of the state, I never presented for funding. Or should I say never, yet :-).
Hobbies
In my free time when I’m not overextended in all this work, I love to be active and adventure. Throughout my life I’ve played basketball, tennis, soccer, some football, and now I’m mostly into ping pong, spikeball, tennis, pickleball, rock climbing, snowboarding, hiking, trying to get into fly fishing, mini triathlons with my friends, and anything else I can get my hands on. Kenzie and I have run a marathon, but now only do some short runs because it’s too beautiful not to in Golden.
Please reach out about anything! I would love to talk.
All the best,
Peter Kempf || The Blueprint Diaries