Judge the phone by the hands that will build it.
Travis Labs R&D — Lamia 1, Abby, WaterHandler, Zabble — is led by Eng. Cephas Kalembo, MEIZ, founder and CEO of HERO Control Systems, the engineer who has already put "Designed in Zambia" on hardware that ships to America. This page is his record, and his direct line.
A Zambian engineer, trained in Zambia, building in Zambia.
- BEng (Hons) Mechatronics Engineering, Copperbelt University.
- MSc Computer Science, Copperbelt University.
- Registered engineer, Engineering Institution of Zambia (MEIZ).
- EasyEDA certified instructor in industrial electronics design — a platform used by millions of engineers.
- Three peer-reviewed papers — Springer Nature's Discover Electronics, the Journal of Software Engineering and Applications and the Zambia ICT Journal — plus seven manuscripts pending publication, including the LWSC economizer study submitted to MDPI Electronics.
- Author of two books — Cyber-Physical Systems for Mining Pollution Remediation (2026, five language editions on Amazon) and Embedded IoT Systems: From Concept to Cloud, the 272-page textbook that ships with the Zabble kit.
- Founder of HERO Control Systems (2019) and ZStudy — Zambia's first STEM-kit maker, 2022 Genius Zambia award.
The record.
BEng (Hons) Mechatronics Engineering, then MSc Computer Science. Tutored fourth-year electrical, electronics and telecommunications students in microprocessors and circuit design.
Founded HERO Control Systems after being unable to source an electronic device for a final-year project — so he built it.
HCS incorporated. ZStudy builds the first Zambian-designed STEM kit; kits reach 57 schools.
Genius Zambia award — most innovative STEM solution. EasyEDA certified instructor in industrial electronics design.
WaterHandler control electronics designed in Lusaka and exported to Texas — silkscreened "Designed in Zambia, Assembled in USA". Publishes the Embedded IoT Systems book with the Zabble kit; papers in the Journal of Software Engineering and Applications and the Zambia ICT Journal.
Paper in Springer Nature's Discover Electronics. LWSC replacement card deployed with zero failures. MTN Zambia contracted for telecom repair. O'Sense launched with seven apps. 300+ engineers trained. Lamia 1 programme opened.
Peer-reviewed, published, and readable now.
Three journal papers and two books — every one on the same problems Lamia 1 must solve: power on small processors, security without connectivity, and electronics you can teach with.
Design and analysis of a fuse-protected, ESD-aware power fabric for lattice-based modular STEAM educational electronics
The power fabric behind the Zabble board: a checkerboard stud lattice with provable reach to power and ground, column-selectable rails and ESD protection.
Read the paper →
Secure Offline: A Hardware-Bound Cryptographic Framework for Software License Validation in Internet-Constrained Educational Environments
Security analysis of a real offline educational platform and a hardware-bound licensing framework that cuts successful circumvention by 97.3% on low-resource devices.
Read the paper →
Cyber Physical Framework for Mining Pollution Remediation Using RISC-V and AI in Zambia
An edge-AI, RISC-V based cyber-physical framework for monitoring and remediating mining pollution in Zambian mining regions.
Read the paper →
Cyber-Physical Systems for Mining Pollution Remediation: RISC-V and AI Approaches for River Water-Quality Monitoring in Zambia
Grew out of the Copperbelt research: RISC-V processors on an adaptive LoRa mesh, edge AI and water-quality sensing for rivers affected by a century of copper mining.
See the book →
Embedded IoT Systems: From Concept to Cloud — A Comprehensive Technical Guide Using ESP32 and AWS IoT
Memory, pointers and data structures in embedded C++, ESP32 and FreeRTOS, Wi-Fi, MQTT, AWS IoT security, ML on microcontrollers — built around the Zabble project.
Request a copy →Pending publication
- Fixed DC-Regulated versus PWM-Based Contactor Coil Economizer Topologies: A Comparative Analysis of Thermal Performance, Surge Immunity and Reliability in Degraded Power Quality Environments — with Francis Mulolani (University of Namibia) and Esau Zulu (CBU) · submitted to MDPI Electronics — the research behind the LWSC board
- SecureDX: Graduated Security Gates for DevSecOps Pipelines — HERO Control Systems · pending publication
- Data Residency Compliance under Zambia's Data Protection Act 2021: A Framework for Cross-Border Data Flow Detection — with Dr George Mufungulwa (CBU School of ICT) · pending publication
- Conscious Money Protocol (CMP): Purpose-Aware Tokens with Spend-Trust Consensus for Vendor-Agnostic Control in Low-Connectivity Markets — Kalembo et al., Hero Control Systems
- Quantifying Encryption-Induced Performance Bottlenecks in Embedded IoT Microcontrollers: ESP32-S3, NXP LPC55S69 and STM32F439 — with Derrick Ntalasha, Copperbelt University
- Adaptive Energy-Aware MQTT Communication Specification for Remote IoT Water Management Systems: A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach — with Derrick Ntalasha, Copperbelt University
- Wi-Fi Provisioning for Headless IoT Devices: Design Principles and Cross-Architecture Considerations for Single- and Multi-Core Systems — with Derrick Ntalasha, Copperbelt University
Investors speak to the engineer, not a form.
Terms, the technical plan and the data room are shared under NDA. Write or call directly.
- cephas@hcsys.co
- Phone / WhatsApp
- +260 967 754 716
- Office
- Plot No. 34, Harrison Chongo Road, Nyumbayanga, Lusaka, Zambia
