Back01 · Case Study
FlaskRaspberry PiUSB/IPTailscalePyQt5

Systems Engineering · 2024· External Client

Diagnostic Bridge

One diagnostic tool.
Five garages.
Zero travel.

The Challenge

Garages needed to share

£8,000+

of diagnostic equipment

across five locations.

No commercial solution existed at a viable price point. Site visits meant dead time. Duplicating hardware across every location was out of the question.

The client needed something mechanics could operate daily — without changing their existing diagnostic software or workflow in any way.

How It Works

USB/IP

Hardware tunneling over TCP/IP

Tailscale

Zero-config mesh VPN

Flask

API session management

PyQt5

Native Windows desktop app

Engineering Challenges

LATENCY

Stable real-time OBD-II communication over consumer broadband. No dropped sessions.

RESILIENCE

Automatic reconnection after network failures. No manual intervention ever required.

USABILITY

Mechanics see a locally connected device. The network is invisible to them.

Outcome

LIVE

Status

0

Critical Incidents

5+

Locations

DAILY

Active Usage

Currently
Commercialised

Deployed across multiple garage locations. Significant operational cost savings from hardware consolidation. Used daily by mechanics — zero training required, zero critical incidents post-deployment.

What I Learned

Real-world reliability
is not a coding problem.
It's a systems problem.