Project Experience


Boat Master

Boat Master is a mobile application I developed to provide an accessible and realistic boat berthing and navigation simulator. It is designed to realistically emulate the movement and control of various boats in real life using rigidbody-based physics simulation, based on the experience of people who have driven the various types of boats featured, because many boaters feel the need to end their day earlier due to a lack of confidence in berthing their boat, as they don't get much of an opportunity to practice.

Boat Master has over 40,000 active users across Android & iOS, and has been recognised as an important tool to the Boat Industry, with boat driving instructors recommending students complete up to level 3 before driving a real boat. It has also been featured in Marina World Magazine, and has an average rating of 4.8/5 on the App Store, and 4.2/5 on the Google Play Store

I started working on it in November 2017, after identifying that there is a significant lack of quality apps on the App Store and Google Play that address this issue. I initially released a public beta version of the app, which gave me an opportunity to solve the various issues with the app and take on a solid amount of user feedback. I released the first full version of Boat Master in May 2018, featuring motorboat and superyacht berthing levels.

Since then I have been releasing updates to the game, adding more content and making significant improvements to the game. A full list of features, screenshots and more is available on the game's website, www.flatwombatstudios.com

The above image features the majority of components used in the final prototype of the smart fridge system before it was assembled.

E.R.I.C Smart Fridge

The 'Electronic Refrigerator Information Centre' was my year 12 Major Project for Design and Technology. It is a system that can collect information about contents of the fridge, such as the amount of milk and eggs, then send that information to a web app which automatically displayed that information in an engaging way as well as automatically adding and removing the tracked items like milk and eggs from the built-in shopping list. It consisted of 4 components:



1. A central control box containing an Arduino for collecting the sensor information and a Raspberry Pi for processing and uploading that processed data to the server. It also has a built-in camera with custom flash for getting info on other items in the fridge, as well as a status LED.



2. 2 Milk sensors, which were simple weight sensors that sat under the milk, measuring the weight of the cartons (The black button on the side of these sensors is a tear button to reset the weight sensor when a new bottle was added)




3. An Egg sensor, featuring 6 egg holding slots with switches, allowing the number of eggs to be counted.





4. A Web App which is hosted on the internet, and analyses the data sent from the central control box and displays it to the user in the form of a general dashboard with icons indicating the milk amount and egg count, and a shopping list page where the milk and eggs are automatically added and removed and the user can add their own items too.


The milk sensors and egg sensor are connected to the central control box via USB cables (USB 2 for the Milk Sensors, USB 3 for the egg sensor), and all of the casing made for the system was 3D modelled by me in Solidworks then 3D printed in ABS. The whole system is powered off of a single micro USB cable.


This project was one of the most interesting and enjoyable project I have ever done because it allowed me to develop many new skills and combine my knowledge of programming and design & development to produce a device that can solve a problem in an interesting new way that has not been achieved by any existing solutions. At the time I developed that project, there was no smart fridge solution which could actually measure the contents of the fridge and send it to the user, and existing smartfridges only went as far as offering internal cameras (and that was in an $8000 fridge). A system like this may have a cost to manufacture of $100 or less.


Simple Demonstration Video

Bluetooth Controlled Car with Crash Prevention

As part of Mechatronics 1, I had the opportunity to go beyond the standard requirements of the course and develop custom projects. I Elected to develop an ultrasonic radar system with the FPGA and a bluetooth controlled car using AVR Embedded C, controlled by a mobile app, which integrated the ultrasonic radar system. Both projects had short timeframes (3-4 weeks), and I learned alot throughout the process of developing them.

The Ultrasonic Radar System

This was the first Assignment and featured an Intel/Altera Cyclone IV powered FPGA, an ultrasonic sensor to measure distance and a stepper motor to control the direction of the ultrasonic sensor precisely. The ultrasonic sensor outputs the time in microseconds that the signal takes to return, and also sends a visual output to the LEDs (With blue being furthest away, and more LEDs on meaning a further distance). The stepper motor moves left and right through an 180 degrees. A final functionality demo and more detail on the development of the system can be found in the video below.



The Bluetooth Controlled Car Project

In the second assignment, the focus was using embedded C to control an atmega328p (the arduino uno MCU) without the Arduino libraries. This part of the project featured 3 major components: The bluetooth communication (Achieved through a bluetooth classic module which interfaced with UART on the MCU), a custom-built DC motor controller featuring PWM control of the motors and a h-bridge so the movement direction can be reversed, and a stepper motor to accurately control the steering of the front wheel. It also featured some simple input from the FPGA, which told it when an object was too close to the car and automatically stopped the engines. On the phone I utilised an app called 'Bluetooth Electronics' which allowed me to quickly build a functional control UI. The video below provides a full demo of all of the features of the car as well as an outline of the development process.



All of the code for the MCU (Arduino) portion is also open-source and available on GitHub, linked below.


Work Experience




Founder of Flat Wombat Studios - Independent Business Experience

Through my experience delivering Boat Master to consumers throughout the world, I have learned the process of getting an application ready for submission to the App Store and Google Play, as well as all of the intricate details you may not know of before you jump into app development, such as the need to develop a privacy policy, the various legal processes you must go through to put your app up on the App Store (with special rules for encryption being quite an unexpected issue) as well as the general process of marketing and supporting your users through social media and reviews as well as updates to the game.

Electronics Engineer @ NEOZ Lighting

In my first engineering role in industry, I have been given the opportunity to learn a lot about the process of bringing a next-generation hardware product to market.
This included the process of developing and utilising instrumentation for extensive testing, product certification, and learning much more about how hardware prototypes are developed in industry in comparison to the hobby-level electronics I was more experienced with. I've also had much more exposure to the hardware development process, determining components and evaluating hardware schematics, as well as at one stage acting in a leadership position on a project. Learn more

Digital Technologies Specialist Technican at
St Andrew's Cathedral School

I worked as the Digital Technologies specialist Technician in the Design and Art Department of St Andrew's Cathedral School in the Sydney CBD. This involved maintaining workshops, 3D printers and laser cutters, as well as setting up simple computer kits for students which includes setting up Raspberry Pi's, Arduinos and more. I was also involved in supporting the school's makerspace, an afternoon during the week when students can come in and use the workshops, computer lab and more after school for their own creative projects and to continue working on school projects.

Customer Survey System for Whitehaven motoryachts at the Sydney Boat Show

Whitehaven motoryachts required an iPad-based user survey submission system to collect potential client details at a show. I developed a simple local network offline for them where a small web server on the local network would host a simple survey submission page, designed to work on iPads and operate as a Full screen web app. The survey collected various data such as potential customer contact details and their boat preferences. Data was collected into a simple SQL database, allowing it to be easily exported into CSV for use and analysis at the end of each day.

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Copyright © Tommy Vaux

All Images/Content is photographed or made by me unless otherwise stated