Welcome to AFinnovations

This is a portfolio of work made during my free time to try out new technology and build small automation projects for at home.

This website is in beta mode and is in development.

About Me

Hi, my name is Alex Fagg and this portfolio is a platform for building innovations to explore what new technologies are out there and have a play with building new home ideas. My passion is in software and processes, and since becoming a father I look for ways to make life easier whilst still doing some passion projects.

More about me and AFinnovations

Since a very young age I have been fascinated and excited by technology and software. I would always be trying to get more time on our family computer to play Command and Conquer: Red Alert, which will always remain a favourite! This passion continued through studying Software Engineering at university and building my career.

Problem Solving

As a child, I was always quick to solve the next maths problem, and that led me to take an interest in what my older siblings were doing with their maths homework. This transformed into problem-solving with computers—an interest that has never gone away. I'm always trying to find new ways to make things easier, enabling more time to learn and develop new hobbies.

A Desire to Help

A big part of my personality is supporting others. I've spent most of my adult life being involved, one way or another, helping others through volunteering and mentoring.

AFinnovations is a term I thought of that pulls together ideas I have from around the house and day-to-day life. I built everything from the ground up and with a focus on being eco-conscious; how I impact the environment is at the forefront of everything I build.

Carbon Net Zero

Everything I look to build is designed to have a view of the direct and indirect greenhouse gas impact. With our view to be Net-Zero, I use this information to stay 100% renewable within our control and offset everywhere else. My wife and I have taken this approach to run an eco-household and learn whilst we change our habits.

I firmly believe that innovation is the way to make change for good, whether that is as an individual or for small businesses.

Support Ourselves and Share with Others

The things I develop are based on ideas and desires we have had personally, how we want to be a green household, how we can make a difference to the people around us, and our hobbies. I enjoy talking to other people locally about the day to day things we all do, which we could do better. Since becoming a dad I have spent more time thinking what I can do to make life easier so I can spend more time with my child.

Automation is key to making a process better, why perform repetitive tasks? Two of the frequent answers are that there isn't a solution for it or that individuals don't have the resources to solve it.

Automate by Design

As an individual I want what I build to be designed and planned with automation at the start. Any idea or change needs to have strong reasons for not being automated, otherwise the idea needs to adapt.

My projects

Each of my projects makes use of a dedicated website. This section provides an overview of each project as well as notification of new projects I'm working on.

coming soon

ParentNav

A personal project to build a helpful navigation assistant for parents. I am building this to learn how to integrate public mapping APIs to optimize daily family routes, like the school run, with a focus on local safety

coming soon

Energy

An Energy project that was to provide a unique way to track and visualise your home's energy usage. Something my wife and I do at home to see how eco we are and how we can do something about it.

coming soon

Media

A media project to have a cheap way to store and view media. It was to support my wife with the vast amount of photos that need to be sorted and viewable whilst stored as cheaply as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

I have done my best to try and answer some questions that have been asked by friends, as I've spoken to them about my projects.

It's in the name, AFinnovations. I build various projects based on the needs that I and my family have personally and I innovate where possible. This does mean I build projects that are unrelated to each other. Through the use of automation, I can base my projects on a simple setup that enables me to tailor projects without needing to rebuild fundamentals.

In short, I'd like to chat about the idea! I'm always looking for innovations and if it means we can help our community and all make ideas come to life then we will be wanting to build what we can. At this time, I'm not looking to build many new things.