Dean Johnston

I build systems where software meets infrastructure, automation, and the night sky.

Full-stack software engineer working across Laravel, Next.js, APIs, DevOps, self-hosted infrastructure, observability, embedded devices, and imaging workflows.

View Work → Visit dean0.space →
GitHub Get in touch

Projects built to be lived with

Case Study / Field Telemetry

SQMeter

Mobile sky quality measurement tool for astronomers. Measures zenith brightness, NELM, Bortle class, and publishes MQTT/REST telemetry from the field.

  • REST
  • MQTT
  • ESP32
  • API
  • telemetry
View case study → GitHub ↗
sqm.dean0.co.uk — bash
$ curl https://sqm.dean0.co.uk/api/v1/readings/latest

Live readings

MPSAS
21.38
NELM
6.20
Bortle
3 (Rural)
Lux
0.0023
Filter SHO
Exp 300s
Stack 42×
Date 2026-04

Case Study / Imaging Platform

dean0.space

Self-hosted astrophotography publishing platform. Captures with NINA, processes with PixInsight, and publishes through an automated metadata pipeline.

NINA → PixInsight → metadata → publish
  • Deep-sky
  • Nightscape
  • HOO
  • SHO
  • LRGB
  • Narrowband
Technical case study → Open dean0.space ↗

Case Study / Infrastructure

Homelab Observability

Practical monitoring for self-hosted services — dashboards, health checks, logs, and resource visibility without turning the homelab into theatre.

WAN → Cloudflare → Traefik → Services
  • Docker
  • Traefik
  • Grafana
  • InfluxDB
  • SNMP
View case study →

Service health

  • Traefik
    99.9%
  • Docker
    100%
  • Grafana
    99.8%
  • InfluxDB
    99.7%
  • Cloudflare Tunnel
    100%

Recent logs

  • [21:38:47] [traefik] GET /api/health 200 OK
  • [21:38:51] [grafana] dashboards synced (14)
  • [21:38:55] [influxdb] write batch 240 pts/s
View all work →
Currently building SQMeter v2 Alpaca SafetyMonitor dean0.space publishing workflow Observatory telemetry Homelab observability

Areas of work

Where I spend my time

Software Engineering

Laravel, Next.js, React, TypeScript — product-led, full-stack.

Systems & Infrastructure

Docker, Traefik, Cloudflare — self-hosted, production-grade.

Hardware & Telemetry

Embedded ESP32, MQTT, REST — sensors and field instruments.

Astrophotography Platform

Deep-sky images, processing pipelines, automated publishing.

About

"I like the messy parts of systems: APIs, queues, telemetry, deployment, monitoring, and the interfaces that make them usable."
Read more about me →