FIRST SMALL STEP
2006

GIST: The one which started it all, the first car I made.

I learnt the concept of voltage and current (I did not know the word current as it was never mentioned on alkaline batteries) just by experimentation with two 9v batteries. Knew it long before it was taught.

In this car I made a provision to make the batteries serial or parallel on the basis of my requirement of speed or endurance respectively.

Keep innovating.

CANSUB
2007

GIST: A micro submarine which had waterproofing, lots of sugru and rechargeable ports.

It is made of camera canisters, caps and a small bottle. Took me time and experimentation to get the formulae right.

The amount of air needed to just get it afloat, at the same time stay invisible. Challenges included from keeping water away from the motor and circuit and how to prevent discharge of battery via its terminals (as water conducts electricity).

It’s a truly amazing creation for me and the astonishing part is it still works till date!

PYRAMIDAL CAR
2008

GIST: Unibody designed car, which looks like a pyramid is very compact and lightweight in nature.

Made out of a mouse pad! It is an awesome thing to play with as it is extremely frothy due to no weight of chassis or body.

It’s made up of all unstandardised paraphernalia.Mouse pad, binding clip and zip ties. Off course has rechargeable battery :)

Keep transforming.

SELF SPIN
2004-2008

GIST: A top which goes does not require muscle power. The top has absolutely no moving parts at all outside. It works on the concept of inertia and it moves round with a rechargeable battery.

This is the one thing which has taught me more that any book. When I was small I always used to play with a top. My first attempt to make a self-spinning top started in class 6.

I could never understand how to make it. It seemed impossible. How will the motor move, how will the balance be maintained, how can the above body move in equilibrium with the lower tip of motor, how to put a rechargeable battery (so that I don’t need to buy new every day).So many questions.

I think I spent more than a hundred hours before I actually started to understand how to make it.

The idea turned into reality when I was in class 10.

It can rotate on its axis and along any path without any moving parts outside immaterial of medium. It eliminates friction to an extent and other dissipative forces, to maintain motion forever (due to its mass inertia). It runs for an hour on a 1300mAh battery.

HOT WHEELS
2009

"HOT WHEELS" was basically two R.C. Car race in an awesome track.It had mountains, turnings, tyres, banking, bridges, volcanoes, ponds and trees on both sides with lighting.This was the picture I envisaged for my school's grand fest : ABHILAKSHYA '09.
I wanted to give my friends the feel of a race and my teachers an assurance of coming up with an innovative and interesting event, by designing the model for the remote control car race. It was indeed a herculean task I undertook, despite people's discouraging blows, born out of the notion that it couldn't be materialised.

Being well aware of the fact that planning and execution are totally two different things, my undying spirit kept gearing me towards my goal.

At the end of it, all I can say is that the event was amidst the most successful events.

DESCEND
2010

GIST: A car that can go down 20cms heighted stairs.

I live on the 4th floor and used stairs always. Used to get tired and think ways making a more efficient elevator system or a robot, something that would make life easier without affecting environment and wasting energy.

That is when I thought of it, was just a spark at 2 in the night, when I built this.

Initially I started with making a module driver, a unit which had everything such as antenna, circuit, rechargeable battery and then went on to mounting this on a steel scale bent a 90 degrees.

After all these years it still runs and looks solid.

Keep innovating.

ENTRY COUNTER
2010

GIST: An entry counter, which counts the number of people that went through the door, displaying it on a seven segment display.

Ideally, this was my first ‘Electronic’ project using IC’s, Displays and all those components. A very trivial project; although still holds a special place in my being.

The reason why I choose Electronics Engineering was to improve my projects aesthetically and for it to become a guiding tool for my creativity and ideas. I felt constrained in the past, for things I needed to do but did not have the technological know-how.

Firsts are indeed special.

RUNNING RC
2011

GIST: Plug and Play RC module

After creating a surplus of projects, I realized I regularly needed to scavenge a car to take out the RC module and then attach to a rechargeable battery and then make it a module. So, I came up with an idea of having the module ready to go. It has everything labelled motors, steering, lights being the usual.

It still holds an opportunity of being a great product, if mass-produced.

Note: Made stickers indicating the wire’s utility, something I learnt from the NASA scientists who made a boat @Junkyard Wars,Discovery Channel.

P2CB
2012

GIST: A controllable chemical run boat.

A competition named ‘Sindbad the Sailor’ was held by BITS Pilani, Goa during their National level techfest, Quark.

In this event the participants were expected to design a boat which runs on a chemical reaction i.e. the engine of the boat uses a chemical reaction to provide the necessary thrust. It was quite essential for the team to design a control system also as both control and propulsion of the boat is taken into account.

The idea of running something without electricity seemed quite vague to me in every literal term. After a lot of pondering I remembered the boat I used to play as kid. Surprisingly, finding the boat itself was problematic; as in the era of smartphones, kids have stopped playing with these scientific marvels, which is appalling. I decided to make fire via Potassium Permanganate and Glycerol to run the boat.

It was a very nice approach according to the organisers; in fact the competition was clean swept and came 1st.

A $ DISPLAY
2013

GIST: A dollar costing circuit which displays static information with 8 LEDs that can perform a task of over 5600 LEDs.

This project was started with a simple principle which is frequently encountered in our everyday life, which is Persistence of Vision. This phenomenon makes one feel fast moving/changing objects to appear continuous. A television is a common example; in which image is re-scanned every 25 times, thereby appear continuous.

Now POV displays are nothing new, but none of them are used on wide scale.

So my plan was to build a system can be used at any place where we have any rotating object such as a fan! like railway station, airports, public places and other sign oriented applications. This will not consume any extra space either and is extra low cost.

HTWB
2013

GIST: While manufacturing concrete blocks put in a plastic bottle with all unwanted waste in it.

There are now 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world's oceans, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year. Worse still, there seems to be nothing we can do to clean it up. Plastic bags are everywhere, and while they are convenient, they cause significant environmental damage all over the world.

Every year we consume more than 700 billion plastic bags. Of these, just 1 per cent is recycled and the rest end up in our environment or in landfill.

Reason, if it costs $200 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, it can then be sold on the commodities market for only $32, so it isn’t going to happen. NOT YET.

We can recycle plastic but it's too costly. Neither can we dump it, it’s too harmful. Presenting HTWB. It’s a very simple product. Believe me, if this comes in existence, there will be no turning back.

I made two blocks, for testing purpose-
A. Traditional block & B. HTWB

As we can see clearly both are identical visually.
Therefore making the HTWB was not difficult but tricky. Further, testing and correcting the brick is of decisive concern.

Tests such as Water content, Mixing Proportion, Strength, Shrinkage has to be held further.

The results were impressive, when compared to a traditional brick. The video gives all the details.

GAS WATCH
2014

GIST: Saving money and time by switching of L.P.G. without human intervention at predefined time.

Made in association with MIT Media Labs, India. Gas Watch was designed as an answer to the needs of the people living in slums, where they needed to go out everyday to work after doing their own daily chores.
So basically they spent 1 hr per meal simply waiting for the food to be cooked.

This simple problem needed a solution which was not only maintenance free (read that electronics free) but also reliable and low cost. After a bit of pondering an idea struck, use a mouse trap and washing machine timer to run the mechanism.Thus, the whole device is purely mechanical and costed a meager Rs 20/.5$.

My mentors Prashant Patil, Anna Brown and Paul Anand helped me see what I missed sometimes. They showed that how after engineering, we tend to use only those half learnt things we know from the course and miss out the big picture.

There is always a novel and simpler solution to a problem. Complicated solution does necessarily make it better. It's just gimmicky.

ELECTRURAL 1
2014
#Open Source#Rural#Electricity#Coming Soon

VERSION 2 COMING SOON

AUR
2014-15
Make any and all of your current USB devices reversible.

This was just a random idea.
After I built it, I realized it was something I wouldn't use.
Dropped the plan to take it further.

Prototyping done.

Retired!

SIMPLE FRIDGE

20$ Fridge!
In progress. Phase 1 done.
Looking for resources.

SUKHO

Revolutionary way of drying clothes wrinkle free using thousandth of energy used by the conventional dryer.

BULBH 2

ELECTRURAL 2

Plane Paper
2014
Launch paper planes the pro way. One hour quick project.

Headphone-Aware
2012
More teens are getting distracted with headphones in their ears, than ever.
My idea is simple, today all phones have a microphone. Use that microphone to detect automotive horn frequencies, particularly (400 to 600 Hz) and high decibel levels. Then indicate it with beeps via user's headphones preventing accidents in real time.

Instant FM Antenna
2011
Make your phone play the radio without headset...anywhere..anytime.

Illuminated CD Holder
2008
Organize your CD's.
Keep it away from scratches!!
This project actually taught me a lot about AC current and its conversion to DC.

Sunset & Lava Lamp
2008
Make a beautiful sunset and a lava lamp in almost no cost and very fast.
Made with small a aquarium pump.Never ending ideas.

Sometimes it's best not to know about how things work. Instead ponder on your own.

1 $ USB Light
2008
I was on a spree in 2008 making stuff.
Great 2 month of holiday after class 10 boards.

Note : A resistor is missing as I was unaware of it then.

WIFI Extender In 2mins
2008
Increase your range by at-least 40%.
Some people say it works,some say it doesn't.
After almost nearing a million views.
I stand by the video, it does work, unidirectionally.

I am an innovator by heart, engineer by mind and a photographer by hobby.

I keep making things, even if I do not know what I am looking for.

I have an ethos of impromptu building of things, the time of the day doesn't matter.

Come up with an idea, prototype it, iterate on it, get feedback and when it feels solid enough leave it. Respiring again.

Resume - Updated on Jan 2015

Honours - Updated on Jan 2015