Andrea Ricchi

Role: Senior Embedded Software Developer & Team Lead

Location: Carpi, Italy

At Amarula since: 2020

Andrea is a passionate embedded software developer with deep expertise in C/C++, Rust, and Dart, and a strong focus on safety and performance. For application-layer work he builds user interfaces with Qt and Flutter, while managing the underlying systems through custom Linux distributions built with Yocto and Buildroot.

A committed open source advocate, Andrea actively contributes to ConnMan, Buildroot, and Yocto. He is also the upstream maintainer of CuteKeyboard (a Qt virtual keyboard, now part of Yocto’s meta-qt layer) and FluteKeyboard (a Flutter virtual keyboard for embedded displays). He has presented at FOSDEM 2024 and ELCE 2025.

Open Source Focus

CuteKeyboard

Upstream maintainer of CuteKeyboard, an open-source Qt virtual keyboard adopted into Yocto’s meta-qt layer. Andrea drives feature development, manages Buildroot package integration, adds multi-layout support (including Danish and Finnish keyboard layouts), and coordinates GitHub CI workflows.

FluteKeyboard

Creator and maintainer of FluteKeyboard, a Flutter-based virtual keyboard designed for embedded touchscreen devices. He added persistent shift/uppercase mode, visibility toggles, null-safety checks, and local development tooling.

ConnMan

Contributor to ConnMan, the lightweight network manager used in embedded Linux distributions, with improvements to timezone handling and file comparison logic.

Buildroot

Maintainer of the cutekeyboard, flutekeyboard, and libcppconnman packages, registered as their developer in the upstream DEVELOPERS file. libcppconnman is a C++ library that exposes an easy-to-use API for communicating with ConnMan over D-Bus via GDBus. He has also contributed fixes to the timezone package.

Yocto

Builds and maintains Yocto BSP layers, integrating custom embedded Linux distributions with Qt and Flutter UI stacks.

Conference Speaking

FOSDEM 2024 — presented on embedded UI and open source tools
ELCE 2025 — Embedded Linux Conference Europe speaker

Selected Contributions (2025–2026)

Contribution	Project / Area
CuteKeyboard: Danish and Finnish layout support	CuteKeyboard
FluteKeyboard: persistent shift/uppercase mode + null safety	FluteKeyboard
CuteKeyboard Buildroot package bumps and maintenance	Buildroot
libcppconnman package (C++ ConnMan D-Bus API)	Buildroot
Registered as Buildroot DEVELOPERS entry for cutekeyboard	Buildroot
FluteKeyboard: hide-system-bars option and local dev paths	FluteKeyboard
CuteKeyboard: .github/CODEOWNERS and CI workflow integration	CuteKeyboard
ConnMan timezone file comparison and symlink handling	ConnMan
FOSDEM 2024: Embedded UI tools in open source	Conference
ELCE 2025: Embedded Linux and UI development	Conference

Beyond the Code

Based in Carpi, Italy, Andrea combines his technical work with a team lead role, mentoring junior engineers and coordinating embedded software projects across Amarula’s Italian office. He enjoys balancing low-level C/C++ and Rust system work with modern UI development, bridging kernel-space robustness and user-facing polish.

Note

This profile is part of the Open Source Team directory. Amarula is a larger team; this directory covers only members with public upstream contributions.

Tip

Need an embedded UI for your Qt or Flutter-based product? Amarula Solutions provides custom virtual keyboard development, Buildroot package integration, and Yocto layer support. Contact us