UMX Robotics
Affordable, 3D-printed robotic arm with ESP32 control and PLC integration over Modbus. NEMA17 steppers, custom PCB, inverse kinematics. Still early-stage.
Industrial AutomationESP32ModbusPCB3D Printing
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01 · Notebook
Infrastructure for machines that don't stop — physical or virtual.
Mladen Uzunov. DevOps engineer with six years in the rack and a growing obsession with the factory floor. This is the lab notebook — what I'm building, learning, and shipping.
02 — Now
Diploma deep-dive.
Full-time on the SCARA build this quarter.
- Redesigning the SCARA arm geometry in SolidWorks.
- Testing RS-485 communication between ESP32 and a Mitsubishi PLC over Modbus RTU.
- Laying out the first control board — ESP32-S3 carrier with stepper drivers and isolated RS-485.
- Writing motion firmware in C++ — step generation, homing, inverse kinematics.
- Learning PLC programming in Structured Text for Mitsubishi FX-series.
A1
// scara.dwg
Diploma 2026 — building now
SCARA × PLC
A 3-axis SCARA arm driven by an ESP32 and orchestrated by a Mitsubishi PLC over Modbus RTU. The point: prove that hobby-grade firmware and industrial control can share the same factory floor — without one pretending to be the other. Programmed in Structured Text on the PLC side, C++ on the firmware side. Built in public as my Mechatronics diploma project.
SCARAESP32Mitsubishi PLCModbus RTUStructured TextCAD
Read the build log → 03 — The Stack
From silicon to cloud, one layer at a time.
I've always loved Swiss knives — one tool, many blades, all useful. That's the kind of engineer I decided to become. The same person managing CI/CD pipelines for hundreds of VMs is the one designing the PCB and writing the firmware. Not because the tools overlap, but because the thinking does.
- L5 Infrastructure Linux · VMware · Docker/Podman · LXC · Networking
- L4 IaC & CI/CD Ansible · Puppet · Terraform · GitLab CI · GitHub Actions · Bolt
- L3 Software Python · Bash · REST APIs & ETL · MCP
- L2 Firmware ESP32 · Pico · C/C++ · MicroPython
- L1 Hardware CAD · PCBs · Sensors · Actuators
Integrated
Certified
LPIC-1 · Linux Professional Institute
04 — Work
Things I've shipped, are shipping, or have torn apart.
Three tiers: early-stage prototypes I'm turning into products, the open-source tools I maintain, and the quick builds that live somewhere between a curiosity and a proof.
Early-stage
UMX Robotics EDU
Open-source, 3D-printed educational robotic arm powered by ESP32. Designed for classrooms, universities, and maker spaces. Maker, Full and Digital kit tiers.
STEMOpen SourceESP32MicroPythonC++Kinematics
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Open source
cli-mcp-server
Secure MCP server for controlled command-line operations. Whitelisting, path-traversal prevention, async timeouts, graceful failure. Published to PyPI.
PythonMCPSecurityPyPI
GitHub →
console-chat-gpt
CLI companion for chatting with AI models. Supports OpenAI, Anthropic, MistralAI, Google AI, Ollama and the MCP protocol. Streaming, ETL of model outputs, multi-provider routing.
PythonMCPCLITUILLM
GitHub →
Prototypes & experiments
Zero-Error Assembly Node
Industrial IoT device for assembly verification with real-time weight sensing, cloud connectivity, storage monitoring and theft detection.
Industrial IoTC++ESP32
TU-Bot
Interactive campus robot prototype built in 72 hours. Object detection, custom emote engine, NFC integration, data collection.
Rapid PrototypingPicoC++
Robot Arm 4DOF
4 Degrees of Freedom robotic arm with gripper. Precise servo control for pick-and-place and automated assembly tasks.
Servo ControlPicoC++
Color Sorting
Automated ball sorting system using color sensor detection and state-machine logic. PLC-style sequential control on embedded hardware.
State MachinesLadder LogicMicroPython
05 — Notes
Writing about the work.
A small archive of essays and build logs is on its way — starting with the SCARA × PLC project. Why an ESP32 next to a PLC. What Modbus taught me about contracts between systems. How industrial logic and hobby firmware can share the same floor.
Coming soon
First post: Why I'm putting an ESP32 next to a PLC.
06 — Changelog
A career, versioned.
The same engineer, evolving through a few major releases — each one widening the stack a little further down (or up, depending on who you ask).
v4.0
2026
OT meets IT
SCARA × PLC diploma project kicks off — bridging ESP32 firmware with a Mitsubishi PLC over Modbus RTU. Co-founded the TU Robotics Club and won its first competition for an innovative project. Open-source contributions to the MCP ecosystem continue.
v3.0
2024 – 2026
Network engineering & hardware divergence
Moved into networking at Digitas — FortiNet, Arista, Brocade, A10 load balancing, custom WAF/IPS, VLAN architecture, cert management with Myra. Migrated the edge from Juniper to FortiNet. In parallel: rebuilt Netflow, Netbox and LibreNMS from scratch with CI/CD-driven package builds scanned through Artifactory Xray. Automated Netbox as the source of truth for FortiNet interfaces, PowerDNS and VLAN records. Led the CentOS → RHEL 9 migration. Helped evaluate replacing AWX with Semaphore. On the hardware side: started prototyping UMX Robotics — custom PCBs, ESP32-driven motion control, 3D-printed arms — still early-stage.
v2.0
2022 – 2024
DevOps & tooling
Joined Digitas. Built end-to-end Ansible AWX patching for hundreds of VMs, CI/CD deployment pipelines with Artifactory builds and Xray scanning, Puppet + Hiera for config management, Bolt for ad-hoc orchestration. Wrote a custom openfortivpn wrapper (split-tunnel, internal-only routing) adopted company-wide. Built Python automation for multiple departments — Jira tooling, Grafana dashboards, load testing with JMeter. Migrated and stood up new projects across the platform. Started studying Mechatronics at TU Sofia – Plovdiv.
v1.0
2019 – 2022
Foundations
Linux engineering at SiteGround. Executed infrastructure migrations supporting 100,000+ customers and 300,000+ websites. Expert-level troubleshooting for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal at scale. Bash automation for repetitive admin tasks and diagnostic workflows.
07 — About
Mladen Uzunov.
Bulgaria-based DevOps and network engineer with six years operating production Linux infrastructure and enterprise networks. Currently at Digitas, splitting time between networking (FortiNet, Arista, A10) and DevOps/SysAdmin — wherever the gaps are.
On the side I'm prototyping UMX Robotics — an affordable, 3D-printed robotic arm with ESP32 control and industrial PLC integration. Still early-stage, but improving fast.
Studying Mechatronics at the Technical University of Sofia – Plovdiv since 2022 (graduating 2026). Co-founded and co-lead the TU Robotics Club. Diploma project: a SCARA arm bridging ESP32 firmware and Mitsubishi PLC control over Modbus RTU.
LocationBulgaria LanguagesBG · EN · DE CertifiedLPIC-1 HobbiesHiking · CAD · Longboarding
08 — Contact
Say hello.
Email is the fastest way to reach me. I usually reply within a day.