I’m Preston Zen. My work spans cybersecurity, server infrastructure, hardware engineering, and international sourcing. I’m bringing those together around private AI and resilient systems, and documenting the work along the way.
Drag the bearing
An ESP32-based radio-frequency power detector, built as a conference badge and taught as a four-hour hands-on direction-finding workshop at DEF CON 34.
Hardware design, firmware, and workshop instruction
Read the buildOwned server infrastructure in San Diego used as the proving ground for remote-operability work: if a change cannot be made safely from another continent, it does not leave this rack.
A project plan, not a case study: what it would genuinely take to run useful local computing on a boat, given the power budget, the heat, and a connection that disappears.
Hardware selection, virtualisation, networking, and local model deployment where it genuinely beats an API call. Designed from the start to be administered from somewhere else.
Security architecture, management boundaries, backup and recovery planning, and systems built for the operating constraints that actually exist on site rather than the ones in the diagram.
Sourcing, integration, prototyping, and working alongside the local electricians, installers, and technicians who are going to be there long after I leave.
Marine and off-grid work sits inside these rather than beside them. A vessel is a constrained site with a power budget and no local support, which is a category of problem, not a separate business.
My background combines cybersecurity, software, servers, and hands-on hardware work. I work across different places because the people, equipment, and practical problems are there, not because every project can be solved from a laptop.
That means a rack in San Diego, hardware in Japan, component sourcing in places where lead times are a work of fiction, and a boat on the Ligurian coast that is both a genuine interest and the hardest infrastructure site I have access to. My usual cycle is Europe in summer and autumn, Asia in winter and spring, and a US trip in August. Specific project and conference plans change.
The Wall Street Journal 2023
The Bitcoin DeLorean that may be worth $300,000
I parked my time machine in the wrong decade.
Rogue Signal 2022
Bitcoin 2022
I camped until I won.
Epoch Times Polska
Feature interview
They found me in some small Polish city.
YouTube
Miltech sidequests
Guest appearance.
YouTube
Featured appearance
YouTube
Featured appearance
Tell me what needs to run, where it needs to run, and what cannot fail.