Side Projects

In 2017 I dreamed of touring a city in VR with local information. I crowdfunded myself the necessary recording equipment and software, and successfully delivered a Google Cardboard app that allowed users to navigate through hours of 360 video content I had taken of the beautiful city of Riga.

Google maps quickly made it obsolete.

After competing at a world class level in FTC robotics, I decided to step it up a notch, and spent two summers building, programming, and competing robotic submarines. With the power of Raspis and Arduinos and some basic OpenCV, my team and I succeeded in an advanced underwater navigation task in the electronics hellscape that is saltwater.

Before implementing the STRATOS for mid-air haptic feedback at my university drone cage, I created a number of novel control methods, from more intuitive filtered control with standard transmitters to haptic surgical trainers.

I also leveled up the safety interlocks of the drone control system, and developed numerous swarm command processes(collision avoidance, path planning, etc.).

With a desire to control the humidity of my house better, I’ve set up a Raspi in my home that manages humidity and logs my wifi speed, notifying me if anything doesn’t seem right. Some of this code is on Github.

My current in-motion project, I want to build basic vive trackers from scratch. I’ve always been inspired by the genius tracking solution that is lighthouses, and this will help me learn its ins and outs.

With the knowledge from finishing my hardware/software co-design course, I extended the granular functionality of a BRAM controller and FSMD to perform simple but extremely efficient data clustering on an FPGA.

Confused by the seeming lack of ability to aim the ball in the original pong, I recreated the classic to see if could do it better. Now it has extra features that add some quirk to the game, and my desktop background is an eternal battle between two near perfect bots. The current project is to train one with reinforcement learning and see if that can outplay the current, algorithmic bot. You can play a version here.

Leaning into my hardware roots, I’ve spent years restoring a good ol’ fashion internal combustion engine, including developing and producing some custom dash electronics. Now that that’s done, I’m going to get some high power electronics in there and get it running renewably.

With two oscilloscopes in my garage and the art and tools of Jerobeam Fenderson existing, it seems silly not to at least try to replicate this beauty. I’m also learning music production, but that’s another story.