Hi, I'm Jeff and I'm currently studying mechanical engineering at The Cooper Union (Class of 2016). This is a web page of projects I've worked on here at Cooper.

During the second semester of my freshman year, I, along with Nick Breeser, Mike Sanfelice, and Greg Tayco, made a DrawBot. Within a week we were able to get our DrawBot, which consisted of a posterboard, two Arduino-controlled stepper motors, and a Sharpie, drawing within the lines of the following triangular template (on the first page):

template

Here is the back of our DrawBot, where the two stepper motors were screwed in and the Arduino lay:

Here's a picture of the DrawBot in action. It is actually drawing almost perfectly over a previous trial-run. It was very consistent.

We ended up doing many, many trials…

At the end of the day, we were happy and excited about having made a DrawBot.

Semester long project: making an iPhone App

During the first semester of my freshman year, I worked with Jonathan Au, Matthew Fu, Jenny Jung, Matt Palmer, Shoshana Sigal, and Jacqueline Le on an exercise machine called the Hit N' Fit. This was a project that a previous year's group began. Here's a picture of me on the original Hit N' Fit:

There are four punching pads, each of which has a corresponding light above it. An Arduino randomly selects a light to turn on, and the user punches the corresponding pad. In this way, the Hit N' Fit incorporates both lower AND upper body movement. The last year's group did a great job with the Hit N' Fit structure and electronics, but there were a few things we wanted to improve…

like the punching pads, which we made larger and in front of the wooden panel so that the user does not risk punching the wood:

and the contact system:

There were also things we wanted to add to make the machine more fun…

like a score display:

and a speaker:

Individually, I worked on the electronics behind the Hit N' Fit and the programming of the Arduino–however, much credit goes to the previous year's group for providing us with well-documented schematics and Arduino code of the original Hit N' Fit.

At the beginning of the semester, we removed all of the wiring of the original Hit N' Fit in order to be able to incorporate a new contact and button system. Knowing almost nothing about wiring, circuits, or programming beforehand, I was able to learn a great amount about these things during the semester and by the end of the year, I was able to wire all of the contacts, lights, and the Arduino up and make some changes to the Arduino code that would produce sound in the speakers and would display the score on the LCD display.

A picture of the Hit N' Fit electronics, along with a schematic:

During the Summer of 2012, I took an Intro to Computer Science class. I learned the basics of programming languages like C and Python and also of software like AutoCAD and SolidWorks. For my final project, I created a billiard set with SolidWorks, which included…

a cue stick:

billiard balls:

a billiard table:

and the final assembly: