Savo's Site

Projects

These are the projects I’ve worked on over the years, sometimes as part of a larger group other times entirely on my own. Lists with more details per project are available at each section’s page, or you can jump straight to a project of interest.

Personal Projects

Page Last Updated: January 8, 2022

Projects I have decided to undertake for myself, for whatever reason; usually since I want to try something new or feel they’d be cool.

  • ATtiny1617 Dev Board - Made a small breakout board for ATtiny development
  • Edit Machine - Made a little protoboard circuit from components I had to track one’s goal completion.
  • This Website - I made this website from scratch, would you like to peer behind the curtain?
  • Laser-Eyed Raccoons - Built a low-power capacitive sensing, artful circuit board, as a gift for friends and family. My entry to Hackaday’s 2023 Low Power Challenge.
  • Hardware Clock - A modular clock composed entirely out of discrete logic chips I got secondhand. Significantly more debugging than expected!
  • Battery Pack Cell Replacement - Replaced the cells in some old battery packs for my friends
  • TTC Check Board - Developed a dedicated embedded system to serve me predictions for when buses would arrive at selected stops.
  • Drone ESC - Making a custom electronic speed controller for my drone’s motors
  • Drone Flight Controller - Making a a custom flight controller for my drone to work with my custom ESCs and potentially other electronics.
  • Prototype Bus Stop Checker - Proof of concept to check for busses around my home. Base for TTC Check board project.
  • Ornaments - Made some festive blinking lights to hand out. Used the 555 timer!
  • gameBOI - A small handheld capable of offering several user selectable games to be played using the two buttons and 32 LEDs that form a display. Created in under two weeks!
  • Entry Fob Replication - Reverse engineered and replicated an access fob for my residence at the time

Extracurricular Projects

Page Last Updated: January 8, 2022

Projects that ran parallel to my studies, primarily with the Human Powered Vehicle Design Team at the University of Toronto.

  • Falcon Aircraft - Building a human powered aircraft (HPA) with the goal of flying a marathon’s distance (42 km) in under an hour
  • TITAN 2022 - My successfully deployed, much revised video bike system for HPVDT’s speedbike TITAN
  • Composite Oven Control System - Made a complete general oven controller for properly curing composites in our team’s hand-made oven. The project I think would most likely get a bomb squad called if left unattended.
  • Hot Wire Foam Cutter - Contributed electronics design to the construction of an in-house CNC hot-wire foam cutting for HPVDT
  • Rebreather Monitoring - Led the design of the rebreather monitoring system for our submarine project
  • Scoreboard - Made a small display board to keep score of a game
  • Telemetry - Developed a general purpose wireless communication system to be used in future projects for HPVDT
  • Blueshift - Created the electronics system for what would have been our ASME 2020 race bike entry. A combination of TITAN and Zephyr.
  • TITAN 2019 - My first attempt at building a ‘steer by video’ system from scratch for one of our speed bikes
  • Zephyr - Designed the electronics system for Zephy, HPVDT’s entry to ASME 2019
  • Arbiter Lighting - Prepared a hardware-only lighting system based on what was planned for the team’s previous vehicle, Tempest. My first PCB!

Academic Projects

Page Last Updated: January 8, 2022

Projects I completed in the course of my studies, for marks in certain courses.

  • FPGA Video Processing System - Developed a hardware-only video processing system to do kernel operations on a live video feed, including a primitive number detection system.
  • StatOpt in Python - Ported and improved the StatOpt Serializer/Deserializer from MATLAB to Python based on previous work
  • Hamming Code IC - Designed a Hamming Code generator integrated circuit with a classmate over a semester using 65 nm technology in Cadence software.
  • Rescue Rover - Gradually developed an assistive robot to aid in a simulated disaster. Simultanious localization and mapping (SLAM) and mchine learning (ML) used.
  • Mazebot - Design and programmed a rover to autonomously navigate a maze and retrieve a block
  • Crane Gantry Control System - Made a simulated control system for a gantry crane system
  • Arterial Guidewire Simulation (Capstone) - Developed a tool to determine the approximate wear on the insides of blood vessels as a guide wire is fed through them.
  • Oscilloscope - Produced an Arduino-based USB oscilloscope capable of measuring signals up to 20kHz, with AC/DC coupling and hardware 1X/10X scaling
  • Mountain Bike Suspension - Developed a kinematic model in MATLAB to perform a design optimization of a mountain bike suspension system.

Work Projects

Page Last Updated: January 8, 2022

Projects I undertook during my employment. I have asked for, and have been granted permission to disclose each project here.

  • Contact Sensor - Designed and programmed a custom contact sensor for use in a prototype 3D printer. My first freelance contract!
  • 3D Magnetic Field Generator - Designed and built an alternating 3D-magnetic field generator for my research group
  • Force Feedback Tester - Expanded on my basic, single-axis, force feedback system to now monitor and control up to six axes and eased user configuration
  • Kneeload Tester - Implemented a system to allow a legacy (pre-2000) welding robot to receive force feedback from a modern computer.
  • Demo Show Seat - Revised the existing show seat used at demos to have its set points easily reconfigured with software. My first embedded electronics project!