I'm an undergrad at UC Berkeley studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
... is a rocketry team at UC Berkeley with the goal of being the first collegiate team to launch a liquid bi-propellant rocket to space! Currently, I lead an avionics team of ten to design and build the flight vehicle electronics, as well as the engine testing hardware. During my time on the team, the avionics stack has grown from a simple switch board to an advanced data acquisition and actuation system. You can view some of the code that we've written here. Our team website is berkeleyse.org.
I've always had a fascination with engines (of the jet variety, in particular). For fun, I built a few different PulseJets, which are a type of jet engine with no moving parts. The basic operating principle relies on the combustion process resonating and becoming self-sustaining. This manifests as a loud buzzing when the engine is running, and these things are an absolute sight to see up close.
At the start of the Covid 19 pandemic, I was part of a group of researchers at Berkeley that decided to start a pilot study to test the viability of saliva as a covid testing medium. I developed a web app that allowed study participants schedule weekly testing appointments and stay informed on the study's progress.
I was the controls lead on a competitive robotics team, where we built full size robots each year to compete against thousands of other teams. Each year I led a group of programmers through the process of modeling and controlling all of the subsystems on our robot. We qualified for world championships in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Founded in 2017 with the goal of being the first collegiate group to reach the karman line with a liquid bipropellant rocket, SEB is a team of 35 dedicated students. When I joined in the fall of 2020, there wasn't much in the area of avionics, as most of the team was focused on the actual rocket engine development. Me and two other avionics students built our software and hardware infrastructure from the ground up, going from breadboards and switches to PCBs and microcontrollers. With the recent success of our first liquid fueled rocket engine, we are well on the way to launching next year!
This is a picture of the flight computer on the top of our test stand for Eureka 1. It's reading telemetry such as tank pressures and sending it to the ground control dashboard. It's also timing the actuation of valves on the stand to conduct some pressure drop tests. Click to see more.
This is the first flight computer that was designed. It is on top of the Eureka 1 test stand during a coldflow, where we run liquid nitrogen through our fuel system to make sure it can withstand cryo temperatures at high pressures.
This is the layout of the V2 board, with the polygon pours(ground planes) hidden. The board is 4 layers, with a split power plane. It was designed in Altium Designer. Click to see up close.
This is a screenshot of the first ground station during a waterflow test of Eureka 1. It has since been updated, but I don't have a good screenshot of the new dashboard in action yet. I will soon though. Click to see higher res.