Hi, I'm Liam Moir — a Senior Software Engineer from Edinburgh, Scotland. This is the story of why PlatePulse exists.
I'm a software engineer with a near decade experience building web applications. Vue and Laravel are my tools of choice, and I'm based in Edinburgh, Scotland. I've always been passionate about turning ideas into products — whether that's code, content, or a bit of both. PlatePulse is a project I built for myself and my closest family members (they unknowingly were just testers), and now hopefully for you too.
Like most people, I figured I'd remember. I had a rough idea of when it was due, somewhere in the back of my head. Then I actually checked the date and realised I had 2 days left. No letter from the garage. No reminder. Just luck that I'd thought to look.
Fast forward a year, I moved home and found that a number of my neighbours within a 12 month period had wound up with clamps on their wheels for forgetting to renew their road tax. Of course, within a day or two, they were lifted and it was at that moment I realised I could automate this.
It got me thinking. This is exactly the kind of thing a computer should handle. Not a sticky note. Not hoping you remember. Not a DVLA Tax reminder letter a month before that you put into the hallway drawer and forget about until it is too late. Just a simple, automatic reminder to your inbox before it matters.
So I built it.