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Website
Updated: Feb 03, 2019
This page documents the build process I've put into this website. I've always felt a need to document my work as I build projects, so I decided to make this site. It's been quite a learning process and has been an off-and-on side project of mine, mostly something I chip away at while not in school.
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554 Watt Spark Gap Tesla Coil
Updated: Feb 03, 2019
This is a project I completed in high school with Julian Thomassie - a close friend, and was our introduction to the world of high voltage. The purpose of this project was to learn the theory behind the operation of a resonant transformer and to successfully build a medium sized Tesla coil. A Tesla coil is a special type of transformer that generates large plasma arcs by increasing the voltage of the input current in two steps. The first step is the neon sign transformer which increases the standard 120V of a household wall outlet to 9 kV (in our case). Voltage is then stepped up again, but this time using two inductor-capacitor (LC) circuits tuned to the same resonant frequency. Matching the resonant frequencies of the two circuits allows for much larger voltage outputs than a conventional, non-resonant transformer. All of the safety features that seemed necessary in the circuit were included to ensure safe operation.
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96.9MHz Dipole Harvester
Updated: Sep 29, 2019
This energy harvester was created with a team of 4 other members as part of the MIT class 6.013: Electromagnetics and Applications. This project was very open ended, and had to incorporate a topic covered in the class at some point in the semester. This project focuses on dipole antenna design and includes some basic circuit design. As one of the tallest in Boston, the Prudential center is optimal for transmitting radio stations from its antenna/mast at the top of the building. This 96.6MHz dipole harvester harvests energy transmitted by the Prudential building and uses the harvested energy to flash an LED.
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Wall Light
Updated: Apr 20, 2019
When I was walking back to my dorm after class, I found a beautiful piece of wood outside the MIT 2.008 machine shop being thrown away with a bunch of other things. It was once a block of wood for holding endmills/bits with a natural patina from years of machine oil and grease. The wood block had some small aluminum chips embedded in it, however, I didn’t try to get those out, because they tell its story as a block of wood from an MIT machine shop. This was too good to pass up, so I grabbed it. After some thinking, I decided to make a wall lamp out of the piece of wood and made it a (late… oops…) gift for Bibit’s 23rd birthday.
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Dynamic Bash Command Prompt Highlighting
Updated: Feb 03, 2019
In this project, I created dynamic coloring for my bash command prompt. There are a variety of shells for the command line, however the code presented below is designed for bash Unix shell, the default login shell used for Apple's macOS. While there are many third party resources that make it easy to change the color of your command prompt, the majority of them do not support dynamic prompt coloring - that is, coloring that changes to facilitate the reading of your working directory. This post goes over how to add dynamic command prompt coloring to your bash shell and discusses a few ways to customize your prompt appearance!
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Sea Glass Necklace
Updated: Apr 20, 2019
After going to Revere beach with some friends and finding a lot of sea glass, I decided to do something with some of the glass I found and make a necklace for Bibit. Sea glass is glass that is naturally weathered by the ocean waves and sand, leading to a frosted, smooth surface on glass that has been in the sea for years. According to Wikipedia, sea glass can take 20 - 40 years, sometimes up to 100 years to achieve its rounded and frosted appearance. This makes it a "cool" artifact to use to make jewelry. In addition, it's cheap (free if found on the beach), and no two pieces are exactly alike. On this trip, I found approximately 30 pieces of glass and settled on two to use in this necklace. With some experimentation and trial and error, this necklace was produced!
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Analog Drawing Board
Updated: Feb 03, 2019
This was a team project I worked on with Nicholas Klugman as our final project for 6.101 - Analog Electronics Lab. Most technology created today is created with the intent of being used by an individual. The way humans interact with technology is highly important and can determine whether or not a product is successful. Because of this, the way in which people interact with technology cannot be overlooked. This project focuses on bridging the gap between technology and a user; providing an easy and familiar way for humans to interact with a product. In this project, a wireless drawing board was created, where a user can draw on a piece of resistive paper and have it displayed on a screen of an oscilloscope. The user interface developed in this project was inspired by a touchpad/drawing board where the user holds a stylus that controls the location of a cursor on a screen. While the goal of interfacing to a real computer was not demonstrated, proof of concept has shown that one can wireless transmit cursor location to a receiver that can decode and make use of the data. The connection between the board and the computer is wireless, using a hybrid of frequency and amplitude modulation. This project has three main elements: the drawing board and the circuitry that drives it (“Drawing Board” and “Drawing Board Driver”), encoding and sending this data wirelessly to a receiver (“Voltage Scaler”, “VCO”, and “Transmitter”), and decoding this information so it can displayed on a screen (“Receiver”, “Frequency to Voltage”, and “Display”)
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FPGA Beethoven
Updated: Sep 18, 2022
I worked on this project with Mark Yang as our final project for 6.111 - Introductory Digital Systems Laboratory. Let's jump right in! Being able to hear what is on sheet music is very helpful to musicians beginning to learn a piece of music. Having auditory input can help people learn notes and rhythm more quickly and correct current mistakes. To make the transfer of sheet music to sound, we propose a digital music reading machine. This project will process a digital image of a score, and play the notes back to the user. There are two main parts to this project; note recognition (pitch and rhythm) and audio playback. This project starts with the reading of simple notes, rhythms and key signatures. If time permits, this project will evolve to read a score, notes that do not lie on the ledger lines, and music with accidentals. A user interface will allow the user to input the tempo and key signature of the piece before sight reading occurs.