VoltSafe Blog Team – October 24, 2022
Ashaya Sharma discovered his passion for engineering at a very young age. We’re talking “elementary school young” as in, Grade 5. When most 10-year-old kids were busy playing video games, Ashaya, VoltSafe’s software engineer, loved tinkering around with things like mp3 players, adding different modules to figure out how to fix or improve them. He figured out that he also needed to learn how to program in order to change it just the way he wanted. After learning how to program, he realized it was not only useful for his personal interests but it is a lucrative career path, and there were many job opportunities available as well. His first venture into programming started when he received an mp3 player and wanted to add a touchscreen to it. He explained that most mp3 players at the time had an inductive touch start rather than a capacitive touch screen. So he thought of prying it open and replacing or moving around a few button functionalities and rewiring it so that it would behave like a touch screen. But he soon realized that he needed to use programming to get it to behave like a touch screen.
In Grade 8, he was granted permission to join a computer science course for seniors, since he already had some background in programming. He was self taught for the rest of high school and, once in university, signed up for the computer science program. So when his friends Sanad Aridah (CTO) and Tash Alam (UX Design Lead) were looking for software help to build the app for the prototype for VoltSafe’s home plug, they turned to Ashaya because they knew he had the background and the experience of building apps from scratch. Once he arrived at VoltSafe, he started working on the firmware and the back end of the app. Ashaya shares that he soon realized how strong the tech was and how it would change the world.
So ensuring a high adoption rate of the app and the VoltSafe products being used by the public, Ashaya and the team set out to create an app with the user in mind. It needed to have a scheduling feature that had a UX that is intuitive and similar to the alarm clocks on smartphones that most people are familiar with using.
In fact, VoltSafe Winter and its accompanying app has been the most exciting project so far for Ashaya because he was a part of the entire life cycle of the product from the initial design on a whiteboard to building the app, the firmware and updating the firmware over the air to witnessing the rising increase in adoption rate.
In a constantly changing field, Ashaya is interested in innovation and loves staying up to date on the latest trends in technology. In fact, in his spare time, he is looking to start up a podcast with a focus on technology and business. He feels it will be a great way to learn from his guest as well as introduce the latest in tech and business with his listeners.
He also loves to play soccer and watch hockey when not hard at work at VoltSafe. He proudly declares that he is a Canucks fan. He loves biking, running and hiking in the summer. As far as hiking, it’s local trails he enjoys the most. He also loves the HBO show Silicon Valley. In fact, it is the only show he has watched in its entirety and appreciates the research the creators have done to get certain aspects of the life and times of a computer programmer and the world of tech so accurately while exaggerating parts of it for comic effect.
His funniest moments at VoltSafe could very well be an episode in Silicon Valley and that is the never ending search for the “tidy lab”. It is the challenge of keeping the lab as tidy as possible despite all the moving parts. It has always been the goal each time VoltSafe has moved offices.
If you would like to take a look at the amazing app and technology that will change the world, simply visit voltsafe.com and if you are a proud owner of a VoltSafe Winter magnetic block heater extension cord, you can download the VoltSafe Winter app that Ashaya has had a hand in creating by visiting Google Play Store or the Apple Store.