Hi, I'm Philip Bein
Software Engineer
I build systems end to end — simulation
engines,
APIs, automation, and the infrastructure
they run on.
Most of it lives on a Raspberry Pi 5 I maintain myself.
A few of the things I've built.
Curious to see my work?
OrbitSandbox
An interactive 3-D workbench for planning a spacecraft maneuver sequence — and then finding out how often that plan actually works. The authoritative physics lives in a Python core; the browser is only a viewer for what the core computed. Lambert and porkchop sweeps scan departures, SLSQP optimizes the burn sequence, an extended Kalman filter handles navigation, and Monte Carlo dispersion runs over all of it. That last layer is the point: fly the bundled scenario exactly as planned and 500 dispersed runs reach the target volume zero times. Optimizing threads all three gates for less propellant — and closing the gap after that means trading a frozen burn sequence for a guidance policy.
Read the write-up →
Mission Control
A single screen that tells me what's actually moving across every project I have running. I built it because my status notes went stale within a week — so nothing on this board is hand-maintained. It's derived from a ledger of captured work sessions, served by a Next.js frontend over a FastAPI control plane with Postgres and Redis, all in Docker on a Raspberry Pi 5. Scheduled jobs log every exit code, so a cron job that quietly dies shows up on the board instead of being noticed weeks later.
Running daily on my own network
ChompChew
Recipe discovery built around dietary restrictions and medical conditions rather than the ingredients you happen to have — a search problem where getting it wrong is worse than returning nothing. Built with Next.js 15 and TypeScript on Supabase and PostgreSQL, with authentication, an OpenAI-backed discovery flow, and tests in Vitest and Playwright.
Live at chompchew.com →
Mission Control runs on the same Pi, so there's no link to click — happy to walk anyone through it.
Less finished, still fun.
Currently building.
Mission Systems
A long-run, self-directed program in mechatronics — electronics, embedded firmware, controls, sensing, robotics. Software has been the easy half for a while; this is me working on the other half.
Satellite ground-ops simulator
A ground-operations sandbox that generates spacecraft telemetry across power, ADCS, thermal and C&DH, with command-and-control and an operational scripting environment over the top.
SourceSignal Lab
Can simple deterministic strategies beat buy-and-hold on the S&P 500, tested rigorously enough to believe the answer? Live capital is capped around $100 — the deliverable is a trustworthy answer, not a profit.
Critical Minerals Atlas
Tracking supply and demand fundamentals for critical minerals — the ones with fragile, byproduct-dependent supply and a fast-growing industrial pull. The engineering problem is provenance: scheduled ingestion from financial and government sources, every figure traceable back to a cited source, and history stored point-in-time so a thesis can be checked against what was actually knowable on the day.
SourceWant to know more?
A bit about me.
I am . . .
...an engineer who likes the whole stack, not just the part a user sees. Most of what I build spans a few layers: a physics or data core, an API over it, an interface that's honest about what the core actually computed, and a Linux machine somewhere that has to keep the whole thing running. Professionally I work on backend services and systems integration — REST APIs, relational data, and the tooling around them.
Outside of that I keep drifting toward physical and aerospace systems: orbital mechanics, spacecraft telemetry, embedded electronics, and a self-directed mechatronics program I started in August. I also make music — and I'd rather ship something small that runs than plan something large that doesn't.
If something here is worth continuing.
Let's talk.
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