CB Labs

CB Labs

SYSTEMS / OBJECTS / INTERFACES

Independent design & engineering studio by Carter Barnes, cloud engineer on federal Azure.

Air Force → Booz Allen → EY · 12+ years

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SELECTED WORK · 07

On the bench.

Seven things I built because I wanted them to exist. Some fixed a real problem. Some just made the basement more fun.

01 — AI AGENTS · 2026

The Agent Wall

A wall of screens, one per AI agent, fed live from their own session logs, so I can watch a job pass from one agent to the next.

SIX AGENTS · LIVE ON THE WALL

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02 — LOCAL AI · 2026

Orvyn

A voice assistant that never sends audio to the cloud: wake word, speech-to-text, a model on my own GPU, a synthesized voice, and Home Assistant to act.

THE PUCK · A WRIST-WORN MIC AND SPEAKER

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03 — WEB & APIS · 2026

Golfdar

Golf conditions scored 0–100 for any point on the map, 16 days out, with a weather-based pricing signal for the course's tee sheet.

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04 — REAL-TIME DISPLAYS · 2026

Signal Beacon

An LED sign on the lab wall, run from its own dashboard: printers, launches, live airspace and game day, each with designed offline and empty states.

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05 — EMBEDDED · 2026

Golf Cart Modernization

A 2019 golf cart, rebuilt: lithium batteries, a relay ignition, a GPS speedometer, an aftermarket shifter, WLED lighting and printed speaker pods.

LITHIUM · RELAYS · GPS · WLED

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06 — AI AGENTS · 2026

Cleddi

A pocket remote for my AI coding agents: every running session, each question in full, approve or deny, and push-to-talk replies.

MY OWN FIRMWARE AND PC BRIDGE

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MORE WORK · 08

The rest of the bench.

All 19 projects, including work in progress →
ConcordFEDERAL CLOUD · 2026A pre-release check that finds which of QA, staging and prod has drifted.CubeFeedEMBEDDED · 2026The $15 Grill FixDIAGNOSTICS · 2026Gift Card Vending MachineFABRICATION · 2026Living OrbEMBEDDED · 2026Grill IndexWEB & APIS · 2026Star & Moon LampFABRICATION · 2026

ABOUT

By day, federal cloud.By night, a basement full of boards.Same rules apply.

BASED IN INDIANAPOLIS

The throughline

The method does not change with the project. Capture the real state. Design the failure modes first. Rehearse before deploying. Verify with a number, not a feeling. Write the handoff before you forget why. I build systems I can verify end to end, and I write down what broke.

Full background

By the numbers

12+
years in IT, after a lifetime of taking things apart.
1,000,000+
served. Users on the authentication services I've run.
“My pleasure.”
Learned behind a Chick-fil-A counter in high school. Still how I close a ticket.

How I work

  1. 01Trust, but verify.
  2. 02Plan for what breaks. Then build with confidence.
  3. 03When it breaks anyway, learn and keep moving.