Projects

If this is your first time to my site, welcome! This page contains descriptions of some of my creations. These are the projects that I’m particularly fond of — either because they were more difficult to design/build or because they came out particularly well.

Websites:
Lyrics Freedom- I wrote all of the back-end code for this website in PHP. It currently runs on a MySQL database containing over 500,000 songs. I like this website because I had to design it with performance in mind. This was my first time dealing with a larger database and I didn’t want to overwhelm my host as traffic increased.

AZGameCheats – This is another site that I am particularly fond of. This was one of the first websites I designed to be completely dynamic – In other words: the page is written on top of a database which is constantly updated and refined. Popular pages automatically become more accessable and new pages are automatically highlighted.

Electrical Projects -

Inverted Pendulum – This encompassed a lot of “firsts” for me. It was my first time etching a circuit board, my first time working with mosfets, and my first time programming a microcontroller. In order to design my inverted pendulum I had to work with both analog and digital systems. This was a challenge but it was fun to design a PID controller – especially knowing they are frequently used in commercial applications.

Plasma Speaker – I have to be honest — I really just like this project because of its “cool factor”. Controlled high voltage arcs are REALLY fun to show off and they get people really excited about electronics!

Camera/Flash Controller – I like this project because: a.) it works very well and b.) it involves both electronics and photography. I interfaced with an LCD for the first time on this project and I used a rotary encoder I removed from a piece of broken equipment as input.

In the past I built a similar circuit using all analog components. Let me affirm — A rotary encoder and digital timing are significantly easier to use to a potentiometer/555 timer circuit.

Thanks for looking!

-Eric