Creative Embedded Systems Portfolio
Manhattan Skyline Soldered
NYC skyline sculpture created using a protoboard, a 12 pin header, a brass rod, a soldering iron, and lead solder.
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Reflection
It was really cool learning how to solder for the first time, and it ended up being more intuitive than I expected. Most of my previous hands-on work has been more mechanical and force-based, like drilling, so working delicately with small pins and tiny holes felt very different.
I also enjoyed how open-ended the project felt. Even with relatively simple components, there were a lot of creative possibilities. This made me interested in exploring other contexts where soldering is used in more artistic ways.
Flashing Jet PCB
Custom jet-shaped PCB implementing a 555 timer astable circuit. A yellow LED represents a flame coming from the bottom of the jet, powered by a CR2032 coin cell battery.
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Overview
This project involved designing and routing a 555 timer LED flasher circuit in KiCad, milling the PCB on a Carvey CNC machine, and soldering all through-hole components including the timer IC, resistors, ceramic capacitors, LED, and battery holder. The blinking LED simulates a jet engine flame, bringing motion and narrative into an otherwise functional circuit.
A detailed breakdown of the design process, fabrication workflow, and circuit behavior can be found in the full project documentation.
Rainfall
A generative poetry installation running on the ESP32 TTGO T-Display. Ten hand-written poems — themed around nature and impermanence — fall like rain from drifting pixel clouds and disappear before they can be read twice.
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Overview
This project runs on the ESP32 TTGO T-Display and generates an animated rain scene with poems falling down the screen. Poems generated by word banks are randomly assigned to drops that fall at different speeds and positions, so the composition is always changing. It was installed in a hallway for the class exhibition.
I wanted the text to feel like it was part of the rain rather than just overlaid on it, so the poem lines fall alongside the raindrops and disappear off the bottom before finishing, which ended up working really well in a space where people are just passing through anyway.