Showcase/Highlights

Blood type patch

My most recent and largest personal project ever. I'm still in the prototyping phase for this as this is a very complicated project that requires ton of research. This project goes into the medical field. I am in the process of making a type of patch that can be easily administered in emergency settings to instantly or very quickly find the patients blood type, using blood samples and reagents, when this information may be unknown or unattainable. In theory, this is supposed to be much faster than a normal blood typing test, using rapid agents, that will only display if the blood is positive or negative. The thought process behind this is that the "universal" blood type donors are O-positive and O-negative. Although stated to be universal a person with a positive type cannot receive O-negative blood. In situations where a person needs blood transfusion fast, normal blood typing would be inefficient. Obviously, anywhere you would get a transfusion would have an abundance of donor blood at the ready. That's why the test only needs to show positive or negative. This process eliminates much room for error and only needs enough time to reveal only the necessary information. Because at the time, I have no patents or anything of the sort I am not disclosing design details. Another medical project I want to pursue after this is an automatic and instantly tightening tourniquet. Using electronic motors and belts, as the belt latches across the top, motors will instantly pull it tight, restricting bloodflow to the area. I have not physically started this project, but hope to throughout university. Medical engineering is fascinating to me and I hope that one day, my inventions could save lives.

Facial recognition

This is one of my favorite and more complicated projects. So when deciding what I wanted to use the raspberry pi for, facial recognition caught my eye. Utilizing python and OpenCV I created and debugged a script using packages found on GitHub. The entire setup process was a bit lengthy as I was following Raspbian tutorials, but having to make everything work on an arm version of Kali Linux, which wasn't directly supported. Another feature is object detection. Although I never delved too deep into it, I could easily configure the pi to recognize objects. This can then be used for many things including the ever changing field of security. Wanting to then expand upon the facial recognition, I came up with the idea to make a software that utilized the facial recognition and could automatically track the faces of me and my classmates upon entering the classroom. From here, A script I made would create a csv file where names and time of arrival are stored. This was a difficult and long process and is for the most part unrefined. I will be returning to this to debug and improve efficiency.

869d2e_bbee475749b749d19811ce3f7cd3b461~mv2.jpg

Raspberry Pi Case

Another project I made when I decided I wanted to build my own custom fit case with stands, for my raspberry pi and screen. Prior to making this, all of the important electronics and circuit boards were exposed at all times, which is a big liability. I got the dimensions of the screen using calipers, then constructed a case on fusion 360. The case is made of multiple layers of laser cut acrylic, two resin printed stands, and lastly a 3d printed enclosure that secures the side of the assembly. When stacked and secured with a bolt, the acrylic forms sturdy walls that can easily be replaced if broken. I designed the case in plastic and not metal, specifically so that if the case was dropped or suffered from an impact, the plastic would absorb the impact and break, leaving the raspberry pi safe, similar to how tesla's crumble in crashes. This theory was proven true when I accidentally knocked it off of my shop desk and it hit the ground hard. As intended the plastic pieces broke, while the raspberry pi remained intact.

Network adblocker

For this project I wanted to expand into more network based engineering. Using my raspberry Pi, I configured a network wide DNS filter to automatically block certain internet traffic using pi-hole. The way it works is certain websites or ad services have assigned IP's and basically what the program does is it checks for specified blacklisted IP addresses. When certain specified IP's are trying to make a connection to the router they are automatically blocked. Using public lists of google advertising service IP addresses, I easily blocked ads, while saving bandwidth at the same time. I currently use this at home every day!

Cybersecurity

This has always been a personal favorite of mine regarding computer topics and I have spent a lot of time acquiring a vast knowledge in the field. All through teaching myself I have extensively learned offensive and defensive security, including topics like SQL, hashes, encryption, forensics, OSINT/recon, vulnerability analysis, post exploitation, dos prevention/defense, and many many more. My interest for cybersecurity started when I was a kid. It started from me making scripts to give me an advantage in Minecraft servers funny enough. When I eventually learned what real offensive and defensive security was, I was intrigued and instantly devoted much of my time to learning this new topic. Some of my favorites include SQL injection, DNS exploitation, and even network pen-testing. (all done on controlled virtual environments, obviously). I can see myself fulfilling a cybersecurity or incident response career after college.

Booting into Kali linux

Giant Tetris game

This is one of my favorite things I got to work on in during shop. This is essentially a ginormous tetris game that is able to be played from an android executable on a tablet remotely. This took very long to assemble as there were a total of 42 circuit boards that I had to solder and make to get this to work. Each row had a main controller with 5 corresponding led drivers attached to it for each panel. These were all connected centrally to an arduino where all of the code is stored and executed from. After troubleshooting faulty drivers and mounting all of them, I then had to link and wire them to their corresponding panel. The panel consists of white led's with green laser-cut acrylic panels over the led's.

Stoplight clock

This is another project started by another another student that I got the privilege to work on. These stoplights are real street stop lights that are controlled on an Arduino and ESP feather to change color in respect to the time. During most of class the light is green meaning that there is much more time left in the class. 5 minutes before the bell rings, the light turns yellow to let you know class is over soon. Finally, when the bell rings the light turns red, meaning the period has ended. Along with the one in this shop, I made the circuit board for another one, to be placed inside of the schools electrical shop. It consists of an ESP feather, voltage regulator, a DIP socket, pin connectors, a power connector, a capacitor, and a transistor.

Sumo robot

This a project of mine from a previous year that I had great success in. Every year our shop has the students create sumo robots that fight to be the last one standing in the ring. On my team, my classmate Nathan Mattarazzo worked with me to win. We were the first in our class to have a working prototype along with functioning code. Each part of it was designed by us and was designed to be functional, easy to install, and easy to replace. We used an Arduino metro mini, two geared motors, an infrared sensor, distance sensor, along with many custom lasercut and plasma cut parts, like the sweeper. Our robot won almost all of our matches and secured first place in the tournament. My design proved to be efficient and I also learned that I work very well with others. Also shown in the picture is a custom round timer I made, that can be adjusted with a button.

Scripting/coding

Another personal interest of mine. One of the topics that got me into cybersecurity was scripting. I started off learning python and pearl. At the time I had no prior experience so this was pretty difficult but I can say now that it is easy. I made scripts to do automated things like create logs to txt files, clean up space on my computer, and other small things. I eventually recently learned bash scripting in linux and I've had a lot of fun making my own programs and executables.

Phone holder

A relatively short project, but a useful one. For this I needed a way to mount my phone to my dashboard so I can view GPS. I started by getting the dimensions of the phone with calipers and building the phone holder from there. The backplate came first, then I modeled the arm and mounting piece for my dashboard. The assembly is held to the dash with adhesive to ensure simplicity, but also modular, so that it is not permanently fixed, so I can further improve on the design in the future.

Turners cube

This project was mainly to get me experience working with Tormach machines and CNC milling. This project was very fun and I enjoyed learning how to use different mills and shop tools. A turners cube is basically a cube with holes drilled into each side, with 3 depth levels.