Over the last few terms, I've been diving deep into digital design and hardware architectures. I've learned a ton about Verilog, hardware description, and how signals and systems actually function in the real world. Seeing how mathematical tools like the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) translate from textbook concepts into real-time embedded logic has been amazing, and it completely changed how I think about building and debugging complex circuits.
I also learned how to build a video game completely out of digital logic circuitry. It was incredibly cool because it forced me to understand how 0s and 1s are tracked in real time, and it really showed me why D flip-flops are so important for saving data states and keeping the entire system perfectly synchronized on a clock edge.
Air Mouse (ESP32 + MPU-6050)
Dec 2025 – PresentI am building a motion-controlled wireless mouse by interfacing an ESP32 with an MPU-6050 IMU over Bluetooth HID. I wrote the embedded firmware in C++ using the Arduino IDE to implement custom sensor filtering and calibration logic for precise cursor control. Right now, I'm taking my breadboard prototype and routing a compact, multi-layer custom PCB in KiCad—focusing on hardware bring-up, proper trace routing for signal integrity, and surface-mount device (SMD) integration troubleshooting.
Music Visualizer — Wearable Audio-to-Haptic Device
Apr 2025 – Aug 2025I built an assistive wearable device that transforms real-time audio frequencies into localized haptic vibration feedback. The system uses an Arduino 8-bit microcontroller to process incoming small-signal audio data. To keep up with real-time hardware constraints, I heavily optimized memory using Fixed FFT-8 algorithms with in-place computations, mapping frequency bins across a customized motor-driver circuit grid.
BattleBoats Project
May 2025 – Jun 2025I developed a hardware-linked, multiplayer Battleship game on a 32-bit PIC32 MCU running MIPS architecture. The core logic uses embedded C and structural UART communication protocols for real-time board-to-board data exchange. I designed a rigid finite state machine (FSM) to cleanly separate the control plane (handshakes and turn syncing) from the live gameplay data plane, and implemented a secure, hashed key-based cryptographic negotiation protocol to prevent packet tampering or turn order manipulation.
Phishing Detection AI Model
Jun 2023 – Sep 2023I collaborated with a UIUC student to research and deploy a Python-based machine learning model tailored to scan and flag suspicious email metadata. We explored natural language processing (NLP) tokenization and neural network modeling structures to evaluate message intent, expanding my background into secure data pipelines and algorithmic optimization.