Ivan Hallmark

For my senior design project at UB, I'm building a hamburger vending machine. At the center of the build are custom PCBs - the brains that run the oven, freezer, conveyor belt, dispenser coils, and user interface. They're what make the whole thing run smoothly without a mess of loose wires or crazy compromises. The big wins with going custom are handling higher current and taking full control over the motor drivers. Bonus points come from simplifying the wiring and baking in better fail-safes for food safety. The board is built for this task exclusively, so there's no wasted space and no unnecessary parts. PCB schematic   I used KiCad for this project from start to finish, and found it really straightforward to use. There is a lot of documentation on the internet which made the learning process enjoyable, and going from concept to finished project only took a few hours.  The trickiest part was picking the right symbols for each component, like the motors and buck converters...

During my time as a dental assistant, I used some advanced imaging techniques to take pictures of people's smiles. One of these people was myself, and I used this power to make my teeth nice and sparkly. By using a CBCT machine and taking impressions, I made the whitening trays shown in the pictures.  CBCT, or cone beam computed tomography, is what I used to take a high-resolution picture of my head. It's like a traditional X-ray, but a rotating arm allows multiple images to be taken from different angles.  Photo of myself using the CBCT machine Once the CBCT scan was complete, the images were assembled together by the machine’s software into a detailed 3D model of my teeth and gums. As fun as it would’ve been to 3D print a whitening tray directly from that model, its real purpose was diagnostic, confirming that both my teeth and gums were healthy enough for whitening. Happily, they were in great shape. Working model The process really began with making a 3D model of my teeth....

This was a fun project I made with the goal of living like an awesome pirate. For years I've had a dream of building a huge pirate ship and embarking on the high seas in search of treasure. And every ship's captain needs a sweet sound system. In this project, I learned how to convert electricity into radio waves and scored experience with electronics and programming a Raspberry Pi. By putting an antenna on one of the pins and flashing both audio files and radio software on its SD card, my little computer was able to transmit FM signals. I purchased a Raspberry Pi 4, heat shrink tubing, jumper wire, and a micro SD card. It was my first time seeing a micro SD in person, and it was super cute - literally the size of a fingernail. Flashing Raspberry Pi OS onto the micro SD card was notably straightforward. This is the only time I've used a Linux product and not had Stack Overflow open in a different tab. I powered the Raspberry Pi on, and connected to it via SSH. I used the Fin...

This project became a highlight of my summer vacation, fueled by the idea of printing money off the school computers once break was over. Mining cryptocurrency is something that's always interested me, as is creating things from scratch, so taking this on just made a lot of sense.   I opted to mine Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin largely for its ease of implementation. Bitcoin Core, a software for validating the blockchain, has some handy features for sending data to Python. Mining Bitcoin is straightforward: a hashed string is publicly shared, and miners rapidly attempt to guess its solution until one matches. While hashing is similar to encryption, it is a one-way process. Unlike encryption, which can be reversed with the correct key, hashed data cannot be converted back to its original form. Block info and CPU usage The operation begins with Bitcoin Core transmitting the latest blockchain information to a Python script, which calculates the mining targe...

During a previous internship, I designed and built a motorized cherry pitting machine. The project combined mechanical design, food safety, and a lot of trial and error. The work began with a set of 2D mechanical drawings left by an engineer who had retired over a decade earlier. My first step was to translate these drawings into 3D CAD models, and then develop them into a fully functional machine. The 3D models in question Once in 3D, I was able to make adjustments for manufacturability and hygiene. For example, we chose a food-grade rubber that was easy to sanitize, and flexible enough for quick removal and replacement during cleaning. Initially, I was concerned about the cups being positioned so close to the edges of the trays. However, this turned out not to be a problem, even after extensive testing. In fact, the slight deformity where the cups met the tray edge actually helped with unloading the cherries, like the spout on a water pitcher...