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Caden Nubel

Caden Nubel, Electrical Engineer

Building autonomous small UAS.

M.S. Electrical Engineering student at Colorado School of Mines with ten years building, tuning, and flying multirotors. Seeking UAS engineering internships.

See projects
Carbon fiber quadcopter frame with motors and flight stack, top view
  • FAA Part 107Remote Pilot, small UAS
  • FE ExamElectrical and Computer, passed
  • CSWPCertified SolidWorks Professional
  • 3.87 GPAB.S. EE, Magna Cum Laude
Quadcopter with red propellers and a carbon frame

Current project

A search and rescue drone that finds people on its own.

Taking the manual multirotors I have flown for a decade into autonomy. PX4 flies a Holybro X500 V2 on a Pixhawk 6X while an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano runs person detection onboard and steers through MAVSDK.

  • YOLO26n selected for onboard detection; bringing up camera drivers now
  • PX4 SITL and Gazebo running for search, track, and follow testing before flight
  • Serial MAVLink link to the flight controller first, Ethernet and ROS 2 later
  • PX4
  • MAVSDK
  • Jetson Orin Nano
  • YOLO26n
  • Gazebo
Read the build log

Selected work

All projects
Two-wheeled autonomous robot with Arduino and wiring on a lab floor
Colorado School of Mines, 2024

Autonomous course-navigating robot

Owned the controls subsystem: a PID loop in C on an Arduino holding heading and speed, integrated with a separate vision subsystem. Tuned for fast response with no overshoot; completed the course for full points.
Senior design for NNSS, 2024 to 2025

RadGuard wearable exposure monitor

STM32 and a color sensor on a custom PCB, sounding an alarm when a microwave exposure slide changes color.

 SolidWorks model of a brushless drone motor, isometric view

Drone motor, reverse-engineered in SolidWorks

10years building multirotors

Design, build, and flight control since 2016

More than ten quadcopters built from the frame up. Betaflight configuration and PID rate tuning, ESC and motor diagnosis, RF and video link troubleshooting, power and telemetry wiring, and local racing.

Experience

Engineering, customer-facing system design, and IT automation.

Full experience

  1. Account ExecutiveJohnson Controls Security, Aurora, CO

    Designed integrated security and fire systems from customer requirements and coordinated installation teams. 135% of quota.

  2. Electrical Instrumentation and Controls InternMerrick and Company, Greenwood Village, CO

    Engineering calculations for electrical and instrumentation designs, drawing verification, and component selection.

  3. IT Support SpecialistThe Colson Center, Colorado Springs, CO

    CRM and workflow automation with HubSpot, Make.com, and Zapier; Microsoft 365 and WordPress administration.

Toolkit

Unmanned aircraft systems
PX4, QGroundControl, Betaflight, flight controller and ESC integration, RF and video links, airframe build and repair
Embedded and controls
STM32, Arduino, NVIDIA Jetson, PID loops, closed-loop tuning, sensor integration, firmware
Programming
C, C++, Python, Java, MATLAB, Linux
CAD and analysis
SolidWorks (CSWP), AutoCAD, MATLAB, EES

Hiring for UAS, controls, or embedded work?

I am looking for UAS engineering internships while I complete my M.S. at Mines.

cadennubel@gmail.com
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