Brandt Weary

Almanac

Creator and sole developer · September 2023 – Present

Almanac is an open-source, voice-first, privacy-first reference assistant for DIYers, homesteaders, and anyone off-grid, live at brandtweary.com/almanac. An open-weights language model and an offline library of public archives run entirely on a single 32 GB consumer GPU — no cloud, no accounts; its one optional online feature is web search. Ask a question while you're under the sink or halfway into an engine bay: it searches the collection, reads the passages that matter, and talks you through the repair by voice while your hands stay on the work.

• Assembled and indexed an offline reference library of roughly 100,000 documents: full English Wikipedia, the complete English Project Gutenberg collection, iFixit's 103,000+ repair guides, Appropedia, and more
• Built hybrid retrieval over the collection, combining keyword search with semantic search over document embeddings, with optional reranking of the results
• Designed the agent loop to run in the browser: it chooses what to search and read, follows up when it needs more, and backs every answer with a linked sources list
• Built the voice pipeline locally: faster-whisper speech-to-text and Pocket TTS synthesis
• Protected the corpus with an RFC 6962 Merkle manifest, background scrubbing, per-document quarantine, and repair from parity or upstream copies
• Open source under the MIT license, written in TypeScript and Python

Embedded systems

Personal projects · April 2025 – Present

Hardware and firmware work built from stock electronics, programmed in Rust and C.

The largest is minibot, an open-source, voice-controlled robot car built February to May 2026: a Maqueen chassis driven by a BBC micro:bit, with a HuskyLens camera running custom firmware. Say "go forward" or "turn red" and it just does it, the command recognized and executed on the hardware itself with no internet involved; ask for something more involved — "patrol the room and tell me if anything gets close" — and a language model works out how to carry it out. It can also be taught: new behaviors, uploaded as scripts, persist across power cycles and run entirely on-chip.

• Wrote the robot's firmware in embedded Rust, including a scripting engine small enough to run on the micro:bit itself, so uploaded behaviors execute on-chip at ~30 ms response with no computer attached, and a hardware watchdog that reboots the robot automatically if its firmware ever locks up
• Implemented speech recognition that runs entirely on the camera's K210 coprocessor, recognizing roughly 50 spoken commands with no internet or server involved
• Streamed live camera video over Bluetooth, and made the robot directly controllable by an AI agent
• Built a working phone app that drives the robot, with the phone serving as its wireless link

Other embedded work:

• Mushroom signal monitoring: ESP32 firmware reading microvolt-scale bioelectric signals from living Hericium erinaceus (lion's mane) mycelium through a 16-bit ADC, alongside CO2, temperature, and humidity sensing, streamed over WiFi to host servers
• Termite vibration monitoring: a two-channel piezo rig listening for substrate vibration in a Reticulitermes-colonized log against an uncolonized control — capturing headbanging, the drumming signal termites use to communicate through the wood itself
• Soil moisture sensing: a capacitance-based soil moisture sensor read by an ESP32 and displayed on an LCD with dry/wet calibration constants

Essig Museum at UC Berkeley

Entomology Field Technician · February 2023 – August 2023 · Berkeley, CA

Worked as a full-time field technician at the Essig Museum of Entomology as part of a grant to collect DNA barcodes from every insect species in California.

• Organized and conducted entomological surveys across California using a range of collecting techniques (pitfall, malaise, sweeping, beating)
• Sorted, identified, and processed arthropod specimens, often preparing them for DNA barcoding and extraction
• Secured federal and state research permits, including National Park Service permits for Point Reyes and Pinnacles and an authored research proposal for Six Rivers National Forest
• Conducted post-construction biodiversity surveys at Apple Park under contract between Apple and the Essig Museum
• Coordinated field operations across the UC Natural Reserve System: site scheduling, reserve invoicing, travel reporting, and budget tracking
• Liaised with researchers and reserve managers across the state of California

Monarch Joint Venture

Monarch Monitoring Field Technician · March 2021 – October 2021 · CA

Full-time field technician on a statewide survey of western monarch butterflies and their habitat across California BLM land.

• Performed vegetation and butterfly surveys across remote California public land
• Traveled overnight to remote sites statewide to assess and evaluate habitat restoration and enhancement projects
• Served as primary liaison with Bureau of Land Management staff
• Communicated with and trained land managers, partners, and colleagues
• Selected sites using ArcGIS; navigated by GPS, paper map, and compass, frequently hiking 5+ miles a day
• Identified plants, recorded detailed field data, and maintained and repaired equipment

UC Santa Cruz, Natural Reserves

Field Researcher · October 2020 – December 2020 · CA

Field researcher on a project studying the effects of the 2020 California wildfire season on burned University of California reserves.

• Served as arthropod specialist on a team conducting ecological surveys at burned and unburned habitats across six UC reserves
• Owned implementation and execution of all arthropod sampling, and trained other crew members in the methodology
• Conducted soil, vegetation, and small mammal sampling

Orana Sanctuary Biodiversity Survey

Lead Entomologist · January 2020 · Victoria, Australia

Contracted by Odonata, a bush regeneration and sustainable land management non-profit, to conduct a biodiversity survey.

• Designed and conducted a 3-day survey assessing insect diversity at Orana Wildlife Sanctuary, collecting and identifying insects in the field
• Liaised with conservationists, landowners, and contractors
• Authored the full insect diversity report delivered to the client

Will Lab, UC Berkeley

Research Assistant · February 2016 – May 2019 · Berkeley, CA

Insect systematics lab under Prof. Kip Will, studying fire effects on arthropod assemblages at Mt. Diablo State Park.

• Trained and managed other undergraduates; streamlined lab protocol
• Organized the project database, analyzed results, and authored annual reports
• Conducted twice-monthly field work; identified arthropods and curated specimens

USDA-ARS Invasive Species and Pollinator Health Research Unit

Field Technician · June 2018 – December 2018 · Albany, CA

Biological control research on exotic weeds using insects as control agents.

• Cultivated exotic weed species for experimental use
• Reared insect colonies for biological control and performed field releases in the California Central Valley

Cyanide resistance and predatory behavior of Promecognathus beetles

Lead Researcher · January 2018 – July 2020 · Berkeley, CA

Independent research project on a California ground beetle's predation of cyanide-producing millipedes.

• Designed and executed the study, performing gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis on gut contents and defensive secretions
• Funded by the College of Natural Resources SPUR program and the Save Mt. Diablo Mary Bowerman Science and Research Program
• First author on the resulting paper in Annals of the Entomological Society of America
• Study featured in the KQED Deep Look episode "This millipede and beetle have a toxic relationship"

Performance of ramp and pitfall traps

Lead Researcher · March 2016 – April 2019 · Berkeley, CA

Comparative methods study on trap performance for arthropods and non-target vertebrates.

• Designed and executed the study across Californian oak woodland and chaparral habitats
• First author on the resulting paper in The Pan-Pacific Entomologist

Berkeley Entomology Club

Co-Founder and President · March 2016 – May 2018 · Berkeley, CA

Co-founded the organization and led it for two years.

• Led weekly meetings, collecting trips, and events; managed club finances
• Ran public outreach at CalDay and the Bay Area Science Festival (30,000+ visitors)

University of California, Berkeley

Bachelor of Science · Class of 2018

Major: Molecular Environmental Biology. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.