Building things that shouldn't work as well as they do.
ECE student, ebike mechanic, and battery builder. This is a running log of the builds, repairs, and rabbit holes that come out of the garage. Custom battery packs, VESC wiring, combat robots, a home server that caught fire, and more. Most of it starts with "how hard can it be."
ECE 118: Autonomous Robot Project
A fully autonomous robot built in five weeks for ECE 118 at UCSC. Navigates a structured field, avoids obstacles, locates an opponent's IR beacon, and launches ping-pong balls. Three-tier plywood chassis, custom 3s2p Li-ion battery, a 27-million-gain analog beacon detector, and hierarchical state machine firmware.
Custom 72V 15Ah Recycled Ebike Battery
A custom 72V 15Ah battery pack built from 60 salvaged Murf bike 21700 cells in a 20s3p configuration. Uses a JBD Smart BMS and custom 3D-printed PETG cell holders.
ReCycle Banks: Business Plan & Project Log
A comprehensive business plan and project log for building portable, high-capacity battery banks from salvaged e-bike cells. Covers cell harvesting, terminal cleaning, 3D printed case designs, and USB-C PD load testing.
Custom 72V 15Ah Recycled Ebike Battery
A custom 72V 15Ah battery pack built from 60 salvaged Murf bike 21700 cells in a 20s3p configuration. Uses a JBD Smart BMS and custom 3D-printed PETG cell holders.
Cell Capacity Tester Review
Finding a proper 8-slot cell capacity tester that actually discharges all slots at 1A simultaneously. Here is a review and guide on modifying and using this generic 8-channel tester from AliExpress.
ReCycle Banks: Business Plan & Project Log
A comprehensive business plan and project log for building portable, high-capacity battery banks from salvaged e-bike cells. Covers cell harvesting, terminal cleaning, 3D printed case designs, and USB-C PD load testing.
JBD BMS Configuration Guide
JBD smart BMS configuration can be confusing due to translation issues in their app. This is a quick reference guide on wiring the balance leads and correcting the default LiFePO4 chemistry settings to charge Li-ion cells fully.
DIY Brushless ESC & Motor Control Lab
An exploration into building a custom sensorless brushless motor controller (ESC) from scratch using an Arduino, discrete half-bridges, and back-EMF sensing.
"Occam's Razor" 1lb Combat Bot
An antweight combat bot built around a 1000KV brushless motor, N20 gear motors, Lego tires, and a Malenki Nano brain on a 2S lipo. Currently about 70g over the 450g weight limit. Won the UCSC winter inner-group competition, mostly because every other bot KO'd itself.
ECE 118: Autonomous Robot Project
A fully autonomous robot built in five weeks for ECE 118 at UCSC. Navigates a structured field, avoids obstacles, locates an opponent's IR beacon, and launches ping-pong balls. Three-tier plywood chassis, custom 3s2p Li-ion battery, a 27-million-gain analog beacon detector, and hierarchical state machine firmware.
USB-C Soldering Fume Fan
A 120mm Noctua fume-extraction fan for the soldering bench, powered off the same USB-C PD power bank that runs the iron. Went through several prototypes chasing a reliable PD trigger board before publishing it on Printables. Then ran into a new problem: the power bank can't do PD on two ports at once.
Honda Element Solar & Camper Setup
Repurposed a dilapidated van solar setup into a plywood-boxed power station for a Honda Element, built in three days for a three-week Pacific Northwest road trip. 100W panel, MPPT controller, 1500W inverter, and a 4-cell DIY lithium pack. Kept a 12V fridge running the whole way.
Laptop Server
Turning a spare laptop and loose USB drives into an enclosed, unified homelab NAS. Build log tracking M.2 to SATA storage expansion, FreeCAD case design, laser-cut acrylic planning, and custom 12V/5V power delivery.
Home Server Setup & Services
TrueNAS Scale server running Jellyfin, Immich, Ollama with Open WebUI, and qBittorrent behind a Mullvad WireGuard tunnel. Built around a $40 OfferUp tower with an RTX 3080. Kept accessible on the locked-down UCSC campus network through Linux Wi-Fi sharing and Tailscale.
Future Motion Makes Repairs Hard
A Onewheel that wouldn't turn on after sitting in a garage for months. The BMS was dead, an easy fix on paper. Future Motion's firmware locks replacement BMS units out with an 'incompatible hardware' error even from the same model board. The fix was an open-source OWIE chip that spoofs the RS485 handshake.