Hi! I’m Tomi. At the time of writing this I’m a junior at Rice University studying Electrical Computer Engineering with a minor in Engineering Design. I’m currently on the executive board of ShElecs (shameless plug, come join) and in my spare time you can find me in the OEDK working on some new project or knitting like a lil ol’ lady.
The favorite thing I have made so far is an RFID enabled MP3 player speaker system for my dorm room. The reason I had the idea for this project was to bring back intentionality and interaction to the art of listening to music (think putting a record onto a record player, sliding a CD into your car’s CD player, or even tuning a radio), but with a modern twist. I also made it so that it wirelessly changes the color of our LED strip lights to the predominant artwork color of the album the song is from using HTTP and JSON. It uses an SD card just like an old school MP3 player and I’m in the process of making it look cute with an accompanying custom PCB and making it have better speakers (subwoofers). Because right now it’s a jumbled mess of breadboards and jumper wires and the speakers are cheap 8-ohm speakers that do not sound very good : ( . But this costs money and time both of which I currently do not possess much of as a college student.
One of the next projects on my list is a fridge magnet that displays what fruits and veggies are currently in season using an LED matrix and art featured from one of my favorite games Stardew Valley. I thought the pixel art would look cute as an LED Matrix because each individual LED is essentially a pixel. It would be connected to some sort of API to get information about the date, time and season as well as automatically update based on the current location. I’m hoping to have this done by the end of my junior year. Not particularly complicated but I feel like it’s a nice little project that would encourage me to eat seasonal produce (which always tastes better)
One of the reasons I’m taking ENGI 210 is to gain familiarity with all the tools I need to make all of the little ideas I have bubbling around in my head. While in the middle of the Music Player project, I wanted to make a set of speaker boxes that performed the tasks of improving sound quality, housing electronics, still allowed RFID sensing all while looking aesthetically pleasing to my standards (and they are very high unfortunately for me). It took lots of planning, and research and testing ideas until I finally had some wood and was ready to get started. Unfortunately I had no clue where to go from there and the 1/2 inch MDF slab I walked all the way to Moody to get still sits sadly in the corner of my bedroom . Bandsaw’s scared me, wood glue seemed like a mess I wasn’t quite ready for, and I still need a refresher each time I pick up a drill. However, I believe that this class will give me the opportunity to learn all these skills, allowing me to broaden the scope of the ideas I have and push the boundaries on what I thought was possible for me to create.
Hopefully that pile of wood actually turns into something this year.
