Steven Valenzuela

Ad Hoc - a solution for a specific purpose, problem, or task that is usually unpredictable and not easily accommodated.

I am no stranger to: systems thinking, schematics/blueprints, prototyping, troubleshooting, data collecting/processing, solution finding, presenting, teamwork, building professional relationships, communicating to clients the cost for products and services rendered. Furthermore, embedded in me are values such as progress, accountability and respect.

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Steven Valenzuela

About Me

During my undergrad in mechanical engineering my favorite course was electro-mechanical systems where I was able to get hands on experience designing a rudimentary Automatic Braking System. To get the system to work it was imperative to understand the relationship between actuators and sensors to be able to program the microcontroller that would eventually complete the system.

During my senior year, I managed teams responsible for developing systems that detected and tracked aircraft using software defined radio, a server, antennas, radars and cameras. This led to future research opportunities investigating simulating autonomous systems and further investigations into sensor fusion.

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Mechanical Engineer

I am currently preparing for FE Mech Exam.

Electrical Estimator

Often I am investigating different electrical-mechanical systems.

Programer

I dabble from time to time.

Projects

2023 - present

Algorithmic Trading

Using the Robinhood API I am selecting stocks based on desirable P/B, P/E and market cap to filter 5000 securities to 10-20 securities. Then setting up entry and exit strategies by using indicators such as fractals, Bollinger Bands and moving averages. My personal project is still ongoing. I am thinking of setting up something to better identify long term trends but for now I am sticking with good old fashioned fundamental analysis and patience. Some very expensive lessons learned.

2023

Chat GPT-3 Construction Plan and Bill of Material Generator

Participated in a Chat GPT3 Hackathon where the prompt was to apply Chat GPT-3 in an application that can help in construction management. This program creates a construction plan for a specified project, then creates a bill of material for that project. The point was to create a data base of projects to explore application of the central limit theorem in project management.

2023

Built a Website

Since COVID, I was interested in building and launching a website using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I thought it would be useful to create a space to start to transfer and collect my notes. It was fun setting up a dedicated server for the website until it was not. Certain things are best left to other professionals. This website is an ongoing project as I am still collecting the resources for some projects and the time to build and document.

2021

UAV Simulation Platform

Using Gazebo, ROS, ROS2, PX4 and Autopilot SITL intended to help students to research, design and develop whatever algorithms they are working on for a UAV. The environment was created using Blender and terrain data collected from QGIS. The intention was to use this platform to develop GPS denied navigation algorithms. Some programs that were implemented in the platform were for object avoidance and object recognition. This project is on standby, it would be great having the time to do this in Omniverse and do something with digital twins.

2020

Detection/Tracking/Identification of Unknown Aircraft via Radar and Yolo Computer Vision Algorithm

Implementation of slew to cue tracking where radars would track the path of incoming aircraft and send it coordinates to a PTZ camera so that it may point to the target and identify it.

2020

Detection/Tracking of Unknown Aircraft via Software Defined Radio

Managed a group of undergraduates to build a doppler direction finding system using some antennas, Kerberos Software Defined Radio, Raspberry Pin and RDF Mapper software. The goal was to have multiple ground stations placed across the city that would upload bearings to a server making it possible to triangulate the location of a UAV participant, then have that UAV transmission interrupted or hijacked using the networking tools of Kali Linux. We were able to successfully set up the ground stations and triangulate the location of a UAV participant. We faced obstacles in hijacking the UAV transmission because of DJI’s encrypted communication link.

2019

Burst Disk (Senior Design)

Figured it was worth mentioning this humble project because out of 10 groups my group’s burst disk design was the most practical designed disk, which also passed with excellence. Conceptualized, built, and tested by me which meant understanding the design parameters and being practical. To test the burst disk, I built a mini “pressure vessel” with some pipes, a compressor and a pressure gauge.

2019

Robot Arm (summer)

At this point I was growing an interest in electromechanical systems. With this project the goal was to build a robot arm that could 3D print and fit in a 10 x 10 x 10-centimeter space. We used the SCARA robot arm as a base design. For this project, I 3D printed the base, spacers and gears, which probably was not the best idea. The 3D printing could have been done cleaner by taking more time to explore the splicing and printing parameters. Regardless, it was here where I really felt I was introduced to the concept of firmware.