I really enjoy working with electronics. In High School I came across a trove of electronics books. I really tried to make sense of them with mixed results. In college, my degree included some Electrical Engineering and then after college when working in software it finally struck me that I probably had the basic skills to get started. I worked on many hobbyist projects. I enjoyed connecting things together like a desktop app with a web cam to a laser pointer with a gimbal to indicate Go board moves. After many projects on my own I sought out some real world projects. I got to create a PLC based cylinder temp monitoring and alarm system with touch screens in both the engine room and wheelhouse. Later I had the opportunity to work with a team of amazing mechanical engineers inside Nike Innovation. I worked on a wide swath of product prototypes, data analysis projects, and manufacturing testing machines. If you want to measure something or move something and want to have a nice interface to do it, I’ll make it work. I’ve continued to tinker and have enjoyed working with MQTT, Bluetooth, accelerometers, lcd screens, touch screens, Tensorflow (normal and lite) for machine learning, etc. Since getting into 3D design and 3D printing, I’ve also been able build many of the mechanical parts used in machines (see PID balancing rail pics). I am not able to show any of the machines or prototypes I built professionally in the last few years, but I have a good range of devices I tinkered with on my own (some tinkering pics):
- MQTT Car Alarm with start attempt detection and audio warning
- Several different animated and accelerator enabled bike lights
- LED display matrixes (with version driven by Pixelblaze or Arduino/FastLED)
- FPV RC Car (fun project with my son)
- Self balancing PID roller project. I did this to both practice 3D design and to experiment with PID control and PID tuning. (see pic below and in album above)
- Bluetooth garage door opener (I used this to experiment with React Native mobile app development)
- Bluetooth proximity detectors
- LilyGo T-Watch ESP32 Watch experiments
- Miniwhoop FPV Drone configuration experiments (BetaFlight)
