Tesla Coil

From 2017-2020, I went through 9 prototypes before arriving at a design and working prototype that I was satisfied with. Version 9 is a DRSSTC (dual resonant solid state tesla coil) driver. It is inspired by Loneoceans's SSTC driver and Steve Ward's DRSSTC Guide. However, the problem with my driver is that it blows very easily as there is no tuneable inductor in my ZCS (if these are strange words to you, check out Loneocean's blog).

I have soldered together the UD2.7 driver, but have yet to test it due to missing parts.

I also want to work on my own musical interrupter. Probably with multiple channels like Franzoli Electronics (I also want a youtube channel that plays tesla coil music man!!)

After that, I want to try building a QCW tesla coil, which is kind of considered the pinnacle of solid state tesla coils as it is pretty advanced and can achieve arc lengths up to 10x its size! (DRSSTC's can only do around 2x)

Gao Guangyuan is a big inspiration to me as he is from the same country and high school as me, just that he is a generation older :) His tesla coil is at Singapore's science center, and he is probably the best tesla coiler to have existed in Singapore. If you're reading this Loneoceans, thanks for paving the way and thank you for your help via email as well! If anyone else needs tesla coil design help, I'd be happy to lend a hand to a fellow hobbyist.

Crypto

Go Ethereum

Geth is an open source ethereum client written in Go, and is one of the popular options for setting up an Eth node. I want to dig into the code and understand this mindmap.

Data Structures

I read about Merkel Patricia Trees (MPT) in Ethereum when trying to learn the differences between fast and full sync in Geth (Go Ethereum Client). I heard that the Verkle Tree is much more superior, but I have yet to understand the technical details. I'd be happy to be enlightened by anyone who understands it.

Decentralised Exchanges

I have explained Uniswap V1 and am in the midst of working on a video on V2. Apparently V3 has math that is used in SpaceX's vertical rocket landing (btw I am also a hugeee fan of starship updates on youtube) so I am quite curious what that really means.

Theoretical Physics

In 2016, I studied UCB EdX course on quantum computing (QC), and wrote a report on it in 2018 on Grover's and quantum teleportation. At time of writing (2023), one of my research interest is in quantum information (QI) e.g. Petz recovery channel

After that, I started studying Schrodinger's equation in 2018 for a physics assignment where we had to write about any physics topic. That's when I fell in love with Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and abstract math (manifolds, topology, differential forms, etc). I aspire to do string math one day, but it's going to be quite a while before I get there. I make some videos on my youtube channel on topics like spin, lie groups, or my research project (hopefully publishing on arxiv soon). Recently, my focus has been on conformal field theory (CFT) and quantum information (QI), topics which I still know little about. I post technical content on my blog and youtube

I was inspired to create twigslot.com from my attempts to self-study quantum field theory.

Experimental Physics

Having an inkling towards high voltage, I certainly am interested in all the high voltage equipment (ion sputtering, semiconductor manufacturing). At my mentor's A* lab, there was a secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) that was eye candy whenever I walked past it.

Anyway, my dream is to be a lab tech at CQT (also aligns to my quantum computing interest), or any lab that has vacuum equipment. I want to play with liquid helium cooling if possible too.

If I am rich enough, I want to have a lab like Sam Zeloof. For now though, I am trying to replicate his heterodyne interferometer, but am still lacking a HeNe laser. For those interested, an absolutely amazing resource is samlaser

Linux Kernel

I've installed Linux From Scratch (LFS), which is pretty much just a bunch of "configure, make, make install". I daily drive Arch on my Intel macbook, btw ;)
I hope to contribute to the linux kernel one day and write my own kernel module extensions.
I've managed to join the linux kernel mailing list, and am going to submit my first patch soon. My explorations can be found here
So far I've just poked around with xv6. Some resources that seem pretty good to me: channel, channel and channel.

Pentesting

I am not good at CTFs, but I have filed a CVE for crashing my router with nmap LOL. I know the bare basics of buffer overflows, exploits, and metasploit, but have not had much experience breaking into actual systems (I do intend to do OSCP in 2024 though hehe). As I am passionate about low level stuff, I intend to focus on binary exploitation.

Machine Learning

I studied a bit of Andrew Ng's ML course in 2016 (was quite proud to learn that he was an alumni from my high school too hehe). In 2018, I did a school project on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for handwritten math symbols. The original goal was to recognise entire equations, but that proved to be too big a feat for me (but not for MathPix!!!!! Big fan btw @ MathPix team).

HAM Radio (9V1BL)

I am interested in antenna design and APRS (communicating with satellites). I own a Kenwood TM-V71A M4 (good because it has a data port that allows programming! which I will embark on soon) and a HackRF One. I intend to go into radio engineering, i.e. transmission lines, impedance matching, but equipment is pretty expensive :(.

The Thought Emporium's video is a project I am hoping to achieve with my HackRF One SDR too.

Robotics

I am very very very very interested in modular robotics. It seems like research projects like superbot and MTRAN-III do not have much updates, which makes me sad :(. After time clears up, I will develop an open source modular robotics network.

If scaled up in quantity and scaled down in size, I think the applications are quite endless especially in cubesats and space exploration.

I am also interested in MIT Cheetah Actuators, as they are high-torque, fast, precise, and have sensors to allow for closed loop control. I wish to purchase some to built a robotic arm (like Skyentific) and an MIT cheetah replica (for tertiary institutions?).

Lastly, I am strongly pushing for the development of Open Source Electropermanent Magnets (EPM). So far, Ara Knaian has used them in his modular robotics thesis, and OpenGrab is an open source EPM. My dream/hope/goal is to bring down the cost and therefore increase EPM's popularity in the hobby/robotics electronics community.

Entrepreneurship

I want to bring EPMs to market in the long run. I also have some other ideas (if you are keen you may contact me to discuss). But for now, I don't have much money so I am just giving coding and physics tuition.

Research Projects

I have a wide array of research interests, here is a synopsis of my past projects.

2017 (EE) Wireless Energy Transfer via Resonant Inductive Coupling

We basically built an air-gapped transformer but it was incapable of delivering much power because I wasn't good enough in 2017 to build a working current amplifier (I redeemed this project in 2019 after building a tesla coil driver and using it to transmit power through the air). We varied frequency of the AC signal and measured the voltage measured on the receiver.

We won nothing at SSEF Junior Category and this project was very frustrating but it did give me a taste of research.

2018 (Physics) Magnetism in 2-Dimensional Arrays

Under the mentorship of Dr Nikolai Yakovlev, we built a python simulator (numerical model) for magnets that are fixed translationally but can rotate freely. We compared it to real life experiments. In a sense, this was a scaled up model of magnetic nanoparticles.

We won SSEF Bronze (local event), YSC 3M Best Project in Physics Category (local event), got invited to participate in International Science Youth Forum (ISYF) at Hwa Chong Institution (Intl event in SG), and participated in Super Science High (SSH) Science Fair (Intl event in Kobe, Japan).

I think this project could be applied to the miniaturisation of my EPM idea, but that's still quite far away.

2019 (EE) Tesla Coil Drivers

Under the mentorship of Dr Lester Chong at DSO during a research internship, I continued work on a triggered spark gap. I used a spark gap transformer as the trigger and a ZVS driver along with a flyback transformer for charging capacitors.

After that, I worked on a spark gap tesla coil driver, as well as a solid state tesla coil. It achieved around 8cm of sparks, which was still quite disappointing for me. But after another half year of fiddling at home (after my internship at DSO reached its end), I managed to build a DRSSTC. On hindsight, the inductance of the secondary was too small as I used too thick wires, causing the Q-factor to be small and hence it was difficult to hit resonance.

2020-2021 (Theoretical Physics) Topology and Geometry of 3-Band Models

Under the mentorship of Dr Lee Ching Hua, I studied 3-band models (cond-mat) using the Majorana Stellar Representation (MSR). I did calculations in Mathematica and learnt quite a lot of spin, condensed matter physics and topological physics.

I won SSEF Gold, Silver in International Conference of Young Scientists (ICYS), and participated in IRCSET 2021.

We are still working on polishing the paper up to publish on Physical Review B.

2022 (Computer Science, Image Processing, Radio Engineering) Synthetic Aperture Radar

I studied various image registration algorithms (KAZE, SIFT, SURF, etc) and their effectiveness in being used on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. This project opened my eyes to SAR imaging physics and algorithms, from analysing chirps with fourier theory to understanding the Polar Format Algorithm (PFA). I intend to experiment on Sentinel 1 Dataset in my own free time. From matched filters in radio engineering to nonlinear diffusion in image filtering, I think there are lots of interdisciplinary things to be learnt from this topic!