Ham Radio Repair & Upgrade
This is the humble TM-732A, a Kenwood brand Ham Radio, with both UHF and VHF capabilities. Originally, it came with orange incandescent bulbs. These bulbs were attached to a dimmer circuit that used a transistor. It used 4 lights in 2 pairs, each pair with a 10 Ohm resistor in series.
Bulbs Dimmer I chose to replace these bulbs, as they had burnt out, with sick red LEDs, to give the radio a more cyberpunk / professional appearance.
First Robotics 2023
For the last two years, I have been a mentor for First Robotics Team 5901. This year, we advanced far enough to get to the Michigan State Championship as well as the World Championship in Houston, TX. We had a hectic time organizing it last minute but I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. My team performed at their peak, placing well above expectations and predictions. Watching my students put all of their mechanical work, practice, and skill into every match was great to see.
Kicad PCB Design
My Apartment does not have in-unit laundry. So, when the laundry is done, I do not hear the laundry machine stop, and would often set timers to avoid my clothes becoming wrinkly. This doesn’t solve my issue though, sometimes the laundry machine takes less time than you expect due to the automatic cycle, which I prefer to use. This PCB is intended to fix that. it consists of:
An ESP8266 NodeMCU An MPU6050 Accelerometer connected via SPI This circuit board A strong magnet so I can easily attach and detach my gadget Two AA batteries, for cost effectiveness.
High Power Rocketry
Back in college one of my extracurriculars was rocketry. You’d buy a kit, put it all together, drive out to the desert, launch it, and finally: recover it. For me, that last part was the toughest. Here’s an image of the area that I launched rockets in:
The geography was very homogenous, landmarks spaced far apart, easy to get lost in. My rocket didn’t have any tracking equipment besides the two eyes in my head and that wasn’t enough.
Ghost Image Display
This display uses a string of LEDs (WS2812b, if you want to buy some on amazon), connected to an arduino and SD card. The arduino reads images from the SD card, and displays them one column at a time to make this ghostly display. Any image sized corectly will do!
Here is a couple more pictures of this display!
and here is another one, with (in)famous frog, Pepe.