One-Sentence Summary

Added broadcast messaging to a legacy two-wire access control network by replacing redundant door-to-door traffic with a lighter communication pattern that unlocked future feature delivery.

The Context

This work took place on a legacy access control product where new customer expectations had to be met on an installed two-wire network running at less than 300 baud.

The Challenge

Marketing was selling advanced features that our current two-wire less than 300-baud communication system would not be able to handle.

Why It Was Hard

The platform's communication limits were becoming a business problem. We needed a meaningful increase in capability, but the answer had to work on equipment already in the field and within an extremely constrained network.

The Constraints

Physically, we had what we had and that as it. Any solution would have to work on already installed equipment.

The Approach

After realizing that 80% of our network traffic was the same information being sent to multiple doors, we decided to replace the redundant traffic with broadcast messages instead of node-to-node transmissions.

My Role

I owned this effort end-to-end from initial design through final testing.

Key Decisions

• Replace repeated node-to-node messages with broadcast messages after recognizing that most traffic was duplicated across many doors.
• Treat broadcast support as a platform capability that future customer features could build on.

The Outcome

The simplicity of the design and an incredible test lab that I inherited made this easy.

Evidence / Signals of Success

• The design targeted the roughly 80% of network traffic that was redundant.
• The new capability directly enabled later features such as anti-passback and bulk activation/deactivation.

Resume Bullet Seeds

• Redesigned communications for a legacy embedded access control network, replacing redundant door-to-door traffic with broadcast messaging to expand feature capacity on installed hardware.
• Owned design, implementation, and testing for a platform enhancement that reduced communication overhead and enabled subsequent customer-facing features.

Interview Story Angles

• Identifying a platform bottleneck before it blocked more visible feature work.
• Recognizing and eliminating redundancy instead of scaling a bad pattern.
• Designing within severe bandwidth and hardware constraints.
• Building foundational capabilities that made later projects easier.

Lessons Learned

• Simple designs tend to be simpler to implement, test, and deliver.