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PROJECTS
Click each picture for a closer look and a description!
*Some pictures and videos were located on my old laptop that is broken :/
Updated as of 6/19/2019 at 4:44 pm
Animatronic Eyeballs
This project was created for a robotics showcase on campus hosted by GE during the tailgate of a University of Texas football game. I designed the entire structure and eyeballs using SketchUp and 3-D printed my design. I used an Arduino micro-controller with servo motors to move the eyes in the same directions human eyeballs can move. I made the device manually controllable using potentiometers and voice activated using EasyVR voice recognition module where I could tell the eyeballs which way to look.
ECE Senior Design Project Encrypted Bluetooth Headset
As mentioned in my resume, for my senior design project, our team was assigned to develop an encrypted headset. We weren't given much specifications besides the fact that we had to use a TI SimpleLink microcontroller. Our final design was a wired headset connected to an audio jack on a custom PCB we designed. This also contained the audio codec and necessary electrical components to integrate the codec with a TI Simplelink CC2640R2F microcontroller launchpad of which our PCB acted as a shield. The audio codec and microcontroller launchpad combination was powered by an external portable charger. They would take in microphone data from the headset, encrypt the audio data within the launchpad code, and send that data through Bluetooth into the audio codec and microcontroller combination of our other headset. This would then be decrypted and played into the second headset’s speakers. Our solution was a bidirectional audio system that mainly used the bidirectional audio code created by TI where both headsets could communicate with each other securely through Bluetooth through our encrypted data stream.
*WARNING*: VIDEOS MAY MAKE SOME UNCOMFORTABLE. NO ONE WAS HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS PROJECT. I PROMISE THE ARM IS FAKE!
Practical Special Effects Animatronic Arm
In the Fall of 2018, I took a practical special effects course where each student was put into a group and worked together to make a practical special effect for a demo reel. Our semester project was to create a lifelike arm that would be snapped open by a demon for a horror film. I helped with the silicone casting of our actor's arm while also leading the electronics and engineering side of the project. The arm is an animatronic controlled by an Arduino Uno surrounded by a silicone arm. The video shown on the left contains what was filmed for our final product without the VFX that were supposed to be added from our VFX collaborator.
TxTPEG Haunted House
For both the Fall of 2017 and 2018, my organization, the Texas Theme Park Engineering Group (TxTPEG), put on a school wide haunted house that had 110 visitors and 800 visitors respectively. I was the assistant lead for the room design team and the electronics lead. For both haunted houses, I decided to make animatronic props to help scare people for the haunted house. For the Fall of 2017, I created a creepy bear animatronic* that had glowing red eyes and a rotating neck powered by a servo motor housed in a 3D printed rig I created on sketch up that only rotated when someone entered the room passing by an ultrasonic sensor*. The Fall of 2018, I created a giant pumpkin reaper costume, which was the poster child of our haunted house, that would speak and light up. I lit up my pumpkin head using an Adafruit NeoPixel LED strip that I programmed to change color using an Arduino. My pumpkin head can be seen on the YouTube video to the left at 1:22.
Austin Panic Room/ Project Panic Internship
I cannot post any pictures or videos of my work due to creative intellectual property but I am free to talk about it! For my internship, I was tasked to update old code on some of their Arduino props that were updated with new enhancements such as push buttons, RFID sensors, and a WI-FI shield. I also developed a mosquitto server that would connect with the WI-FI shields from all the Arduino props and would receive the status of the prop/ turn the prop on or off.
Sketch Up and 3D Printing
I have been using SketchUp since around my freshman year of high school in 2011. Back then I used to make detailed houses because that was what the one tutorial I found taught me how to do. I even made a replica of my own house! Turtle tank and all! I also used SketchUp to design a prototype of a split flat screen invention I had for a district wide invention competition in my sophmore year of high school which actually won me first place. When I got to my university, I started using SketchUp to make protoypes for whatever I wanted to be 3D printed with our on campus 3D printers. Between all the file conversions and messed up prints, it was all worth the end product! Most of my files/pictures/videos were on my old laptop that was damaged in 2018 so I did my best to find what I could on my phone and OneDrive.
TxTPEG Pinball Machine Electronics
For my organization's semester project, we decided to make a pinball machine. I was in charge of creating the electronics since I was the only electrical engineering major at the time. I designed a custom PCB on Seeed Studio to act as a shield for the Arduino to make connections easier. The system would start with an arcade push button that was coded as an interrupt since animations were playing. Animations would play when the system is on but the game hadn't started yet. I had to create my own function for the dot matrix animations in the header files since the functions were very basic. This project used a dot matrix display, arcade push button, my own custom PCB, an Adafruit NeoPixel LED strip to light the pinball machine, and touch sensors to sense when a balled read a certain area of the playing field.
High School Animatronic
In high school, I competed in animatronics for three years and these are pictures that managed to stay around over the years. My senior year, a group of myself and two friends created the the tortoise and the hare (with an owl later included for story purposes) and entered it into the Technology Student Competition animatronic competition. The animatronic used VEX robotics motors, light sensors for the animals to communicate with each other, and each animal spoke with speaker modules to tell the story. This animatronic placed 1st at regional competition, 3rd at state competition, and 5th at national competition beating out the previous competition from the state level. This project is one of my most proudest achievements from High School and propelled my love for animatronics!
Sculpting Hobby
I'm a self-taught sculptor who sculpts for fun! I picked up the idea to sculpt from the show Making Monsters on the Travel Channel. I one day hope to use my skill as a scultptor to sculpt molds for movie props or skins for my animatronic projects.
More projects coming soon!
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