I’m Michelle D. Davies,

An Electrical/Computer Engineer.

My Portfolio

Browse my major projects, both finished and ongoing. Where there's a major project, there's a blog post to accompany it. Check them out!

During COVID-19, one of the biggest questions households are asking is “how can we protect our homes from the spread of COVID-19?” One of the ways that COVID-19 can spread within an otherwise clean and isolated household is by touching items that were used outside, such as a used face mask for disposal reasons, and then immediately touching other household items before sanitizing their hands. Using a color sensor to Identify a mask, a light indicator to show the machine’s state, a robotic arm and hand with micro motor controlled movements, and a disposal mechanism, users can take their hands off their masks and limit their contact with the outside world.

Hands-Free Mask Disposal

Michelle Davies & Shivali Halabe, ENGRC 3340, Fall 2020
Topic: What role do identity dynamics play in creating conditions for bias in learning algorithms? | Website: https://sites.google.com/view/identity-bias-in-ml-algos/home

We made a written publication that explores how identity dynamics foster bias in learning algorithms. Within this topic, we answered the following questions:
1. What makes a learning algorithm biased (datasets, assumptions, etc.)?
2. How do identity dynamics play a role in shaping these biases?
3. How is this narrative being reinforced by learning algorithms?
4. Based on the answer to the previous question, what are ways to avoid such biases?
5. What should we be teaching future algorithm developers and machine learning engineers to avoid discriminatory learning algorithms in the future?

Identity Bias in ML Algorithms

The Sound-Syncing Color LED lights is a system that takes the ambient sounds as an input, and outputs a visual, colorful representation of the given sound. I chose this for the Kinetic Art prompt because music and visual arts are two of the most pervasive art forms, and I wanted to apply Mechatronics and Signals Processing concepts to connect them.

Sound-Syncing Color LEDs

For one of my classes, we had to make a game that tests two players' reaction times. The way it works is that there are five rounds where, once each round starts, the first player to hit the button gets a point. The player that reaches 5 points first wins! But beware, if one player cheats by trying to press the button early, the other player gets the point for that round. Check out my gallery to see it in action!

Reaction Time Game

For this project, I created a prototype of an electronic piano with a basic ability to record all notes that have been played for the sake of songwriters that like to do improv. An upgrade that I was thinking of for this project was having the song notes auto format like a music sheet and save to a text or pdf file. Another idea for an upgrade that I had was to accommodate the shortage in button keys by having a switch that allows a user to scroll through notes and keys and reassign buttons to music notes of their choice. This is a prototype that I plan to upgrade in the future when I have the materials to do so. But for now, you can look at what I have at the moment on this page. Enjoy!

Arduino Piano-Songwriter

When I was in high school doing IB Higher Level Computer Science, we had to do an Internal Assessment project where we build a project for a client with a problem. I decided to build a simple photo-editing software for a friend of mine that was an IB Higher Level Art student, so that they count create their own photo-color filters in Obamacon photo style, but they can choose four colors to define the photo with. This project was done entirely in Python, from the photo-editing to the GUI that it is hosted in.

My Image Suite

About 600,000 people in the United States, and 466 million people worldwide, are medically diagnosed as deaf or otherwise hard-of-hearing according to the World Health Organization (WHO). During COVID-19, many deaf/hard-of-hearing students are struggling to have their Individualized Education Plans (IEP) met in the wake of online learning. There are many solutions being developed to make it easier for able-bodied individuals to communicate with deaf individuals. However, few solutions exist to ease the barrier of communication for deaf people. So, I decided to develop a Voice to ASL and Morse Code robotic hand to decode verbal speech to visual signals and representations to bridge this communicative gap on the other end.

Voice to ASL & Morse Code

This #BuiltLikeThat device is an Arduino-based project that os designed as a smart fitness tracker with clear, intuitive, physical signals that help users track their workout routines and goals from start to finish. This device’s primary goal is to bring the gym membership experience to your home while the ongoing pandemic occurs. The #BuiltLikeThat device accomplishes this goal by using a motion-tracker/sensor and a camera to detect a user’s position for set workout, and then using that information to count and keep track of each rep that the user does until they stop, For certain modes, such as the pacer test mode, the #BuiltLikeThat also comes with a timer to allow users to see statistics. Future versions will include a web interface that will be used to give users some analytics surrounding their usage of the device.

#BuiltLikeThat

During my term as Web Director of WVBR-FM, I single-handedly redesigned and updated the WVBR Website. The main coding I did for this project were HTTP scripting and Javascript to add even more functionality to this Wix website.

WVBR FM Website

For this project, I decided to get out of the "lights" realm for a bit and do something a little bit different, so I made a smart thermostat with a fan function where the fan will turn on at different speeds or off depending on the temperature recorded by the DHT Module in there. This was more of a challenge for me to put together in terms of the circuit itself and getting the right connections & code. You can check out my journey in doing this project in the gallery, and click the book next to the title to see the code as a non-text PDF!

Thermostat-Fan Machine

Inspired by a beginner's project from Girls Who Code, I decided to try to make a morse code machine that takes text input and outputs the corresponding more code signal for the entire phrase via the LED lights. There were many design considerations I made for this, like having dots and dashes appear on two different sets is lights to made them clear and distinguishable, thus improving readability. Overall, this project has been successful. When I have a greater budget and the necessary materials, I see myself upgrading this project by attempting to make a remote connection to the Arduino so that it does not have to be connected to work, and by mobilizing it so that it can "auto-deliver" any message to my family in these times of social distancing, Granted, I may need a sound component in case something happens to the circuit of lights or the message can't be interpreted for another reason.

Customizable Morse Code

During my high school years, I developed many different graphic designs for a variety of causes from Earth Day to Journalism, and I learned InDesign, Webflow, pure HTML/CSS/Javascript. Articulate and many more tools. This Project tab's photo album is dedicated to showcasing those projects from the past. You can also click the book next to the title to see additional projects from my time in the IB.

My Graphic & Web Design Exhibit

This Summer (2020), I did my internship at a startup called ZODAJ (http://www.zodaj-africa.com/#1) with students from Carnegie Mellon University and Stony Brook University to help develop part of a three-part system (Textbot, App, Website) to develop a contact-tracing system for COVID-19 in Senegal. I was on the website team. contributing to the development of the Hospital, Business and Government Portals.

Internship 2020 - ZODAJ

During my term as Web Director of WVBR-FM, I single-handedly re-designed & optimized the Cornell Media Guild Website for desktop, tablet and mobile. For this project, I utilized HTML, CSS, Javascript, and HTTP server connections, hosting server management and XML script.

Cornell Media Guild Website

This is a project that I particularly enjoyed because it ties my love of graphic design and art and colors with my love of circuits and robots. In this project, I display colors both in RGB LEDs and in terns of it's constituent R, G, and B values. This project has opened up opportunities for me to explore and analyze the random function, and system/computer colors as a whole. Check out the gallery and documentation to find out more about my final result! [UPDATE: I added a connection between this project and the My Image Suite Python script (see Projects > My Image Suite) by adding functionality so that I can display the RGB values of a selected photo's pixels through the board. The method for parsing the image is similar to this, with the added step of importing a photo in Arduino and the syntax for parsing the list of pixels].

The Mood Lights Project

To allow for more mobility for amputees we created a robotic hand that mimics the movement of the other hand. This will enable the user to do simple tasks like hold a cup or open a door. We noticed that many of the hands that were created did not have a way to save and replay their motions. So in the future we plan on making this function. Also buying a functional prosthetic arm is really expensive so with our project we are hoping that we will be able to make buying prosthetics more cost effective.

Mano816