Engineering build log · est. 2025
Grade 12 student building toward Electrical Engineering — one circuit, print, and PCB at a time.
I'm a Grade 12 student who learns by building. Every entry below started as a question — can I automate this? can I machine this? can I take this off the breadboard? — and ended as a working thing I could hold, test, and improve. My goal is to study Electrical Engineering at the top most University and keep turning ideas into reality.
Six builds in chronological order — from a breadboard prototype to a custom printed circuit board. Click any thumbnail to view it full size; entries marked ▶ play video.
A self-watering system that reads soil moisture and switches a pump through a relay only when the plant actually needs water. Prototyped on a breadboard with an Arduino, calibrated against real soil, and tested through full watering cycles on a live plant.
Next revision: solar power and Wi-Fi moisture logging.
A cheese grater bought from the shop was broke. So I modeled the frame from scratch in Onshape and produced on a 3D printer, with the handle, and housing designed to fit in the hand. An exercise in designing real moving parts — tolerances, clearances, and assembly.
A custom lighter shaped from solid metal stock in the shop and finished by hand, from raw material to a working mechanism. The videos show the finished piece in action.
A PIR-based motion detector built around an Arduino Uno that triggers an alert the moment movement enters its field of view. Wired and debugged on a breadboard, with the sensing logic written in Arduino C++ — the demo video shows it catching motion live.
A flashlight circuit taken beyond the breadboard: schematic captured and routed as a custom printed circuit board in PCB design software. A second layout combines a night light, a buzzer game, and electronic dice on one multi-function board.
I designed and assembled a walkie-talkie circuit by researching the required components, wiring, and connections, and then building the circuit from individual parts. Although the prototype did not function as expected, the project gave me valuable hands-on experience with electronic components, circuit assembly, wiring, and troubleshooting. Most importantly, I learned that engineering is not only about getting a design to work—it is also about testing, identifying problems, learning from failures, and improving the next iteration.