WatchOut — Step & Stair Tracker

Second quarter of freshman year, and the project brief was a fitness tracker — a wrist-worn device that could count both steps and stairs. We named ours WatchOut. I led the team through design, prototyping, and the final build: a 3D-printed enclosure housing an accelerometer, a small battery, and a red LED indicator, all strapped to the wrist with a NATO-style band.

I volunteered to be the tester. Walking and climbing stairs wasn't exactly a hardship — I grew up hiking with my mom, and getting up and down a staircase to validate accuracy was the kind of hands-on work I genuinely enjoy. We iterated on the step detection threshold and stair classification logic until the counts were reliable under normal walking conditions.

Alongside the drone project from the previous quarter, I used this build to strengthen my application to the UCI Solar Car Project in spring 2019. It worked. I joined the team that spring, eventually became Electrical Lead, and stayed on until winter 2022 — one of the most formative engineering experiences of my time at UCI.