Shiva Prakash’s finished PCB business card
SP
00

Hi! Nice to meet you

I’m Shiva, an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. I design circuits, write embedded firmware, and build the hardware around them. I like making things that are useful, playful, or just a little too specific.

View résumé
01

Education

SEPT 2025 — APR 2030

University of Waterloo

BASc, Electrical and
Computer Engineering

Waterloo, OntarioUniversity
02

Experience

SEPT 2026 — PRESENT CURRENT

Bracket Bot

Electrical Engineering Intern

San Francisco, California

  • Designing robot-arm control hardware from schematic capture through four-layer KiCad PCB layout and bring-up.
  • Developed a dual-input power tree: 20 V and USB-C 5 V inputs to a 12 V motor rail and regulated 3.3 V for an STM32G071.
  • Verifying power rails and digital interfaces through staged board bring-up, using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers and bench supplies.
KiCad / STM32 / Power electronics / Board bring-up
JAN — APR 2026

Titan Haptics

Mechatronics Engineer Intern

Mississauga, Ontario

  • Designed haptic reference hardware from architecture and schematic capture to PCB layout and bring-up in KiCad.
  • Reduced prototype footprint by approximately 60% with dense layouts integrating ESP32 MCUs, IMUs and dual H-bridge motor drivers.
  • Synchronized I2C sensor data with motor actuation for response times under 10 ms, debugging firmware over Serial/UART.
  • Iterated on Fusion 360 assemblies and 3D-printed mechanical couplings to improve perceived haptic fidelity.
KiCad / ESP32 / I2C / Fusion 360 / Haptics
03

Selected projects[06]

01 / Audio / Mixed-signal hardware

Aether

A USB-C powered audio bridge that brings Bluetooth audio from a phone or console into a PC as a USB audio input.

  • Microchip BM83 Bluetooth audio module paired with an STM32 USB interface over I2S.
  • Four-layer KiCad PCB with controlled USB 2.0 routing, ESD protection, separated power domains and an antenna keepout.
  • Custom 5 V to 3.6 V buck converter, with SWD access, configuration headers and dedicated test points for bring-up.
  • KiCad
  • STM32
  • BM83
  • I2S
  • USB 2.0
Repository
The assembled board / front01 / 04
02 / Low-power / Embedded systems

Naiad

Naiad is basically a small USB-C rechargeable keychain type thing that hangs off my HUGEE water bottle and will flash to remind me to drink water when it hasn't detected a sip every X amount of minutes (in my case I chose 15 minutes). I made it because I have a really bad habit of going the entire day without drinking much water, and thought this was a fun way to solve it :)

  • Four-layer Altium PCB using an STM32U0 and BMA400 accelerometer, designed for less than 5 µA quiescent current.
  • P-FET and Schottky-diode power path for seamless switching between USB-C and an LIR2032 coin cell.
  • MCP73831 charge management and XC6135 voltage supervision for the battery's charge and discharge cycle.
  • Altium
  • STM32U0
  • BMA400
  • Battery management
Repository
A water-drop PCB / front01 / 03
03 / Product design / Embedded hardware

Project Hermes

Project Hermes is a Raspberry Pi powered game streaming handheld built for PC gamers, streaming your games from your pc via SteamLink to the console wherever you want! (provided you have an internet connection) and since its only streaming the games you can do this without rebuying games or paying console prices for the hardware!

  • Raspberry Pi 4 running SteamLink, with an RP2040-Zero USB HID controller using GP2040-CE firmware.
  • 5000 mAh UPS and USB-C passthrough charging for up to three hours of gameplay.
  • Integrated cooling and a custom enclosure, balancing power, thermals and mechanical fit within a $200 CAD budget.
  • RP2040
  • Raspberry Pi
  • USB HID
  • Fusion 360
Repository Build journal
The complete handheld01 / 03
04 / Interaction / Embedded firmware

HackCharm

A tiny circular keychain with a pixelated face on an OLED that reacts to taps/shakes to change its expression. It is basically a cute interactive keychain!!

  • Miniature ESP32-S3 PCB with a 128 × 128 OLED and ADXL362 accelerometer; $49.66 CAD bill of materials.
  • Gesture-recognition firmware that responds to tap and shake patterns in under 100 ms.
  • A 450 mAh Li-Po, deep-sleep firmware and a custom enclosure bring the electronics into a handheld object.
  • ESP32-S3
  • C/C++
  • OLED
  • Gesture recognition
Repository Build journal
From bare board to a little companion01 / 03
05 / RF energy harvesting / Teaching

NFC business card

A custom PCB with a copper antenna that works without a battery by harvesting power from your phone’s NFC field, lights an LED and shares contact information when tapped. I also taught this as a workshop to 100+ high school students, who each got their own personalized PCB cards for free

  • A copper antenna, NFC circuit, resistor, capacitor and LED powered entirely by the smartphone's RF field.
  • Turned the design into a hands-on PCB workshop for more than 100 high school students.
  • Passive NFC
  • PCB design
  • Energy harvesting
Repository Workshop
A tap, a light, a connection01 / 02
06 / Computer vision / Mechatronics

Duck off doomscrolling

Duck off Doomscrolling (or D.O.D for short) is a fun way to quit destructive/disruptive social media! Basically it is a duck that will sit on your desk while you work, track your face using openCV and a servo, and finally.. squirt water on you if you open doom scrolling apps such as Instagram Reels! >:D (this was a hackathon project built in 4 days).

  • OpenCV face detection with sub-100 ms servo response and closed-loop targeting within one metre.
  • Two MG996R servos and a mechanically actuated water-gun trigger connect the vision system to the real world.
  • Python
  • OpenCV
  • Arduino
  • Servo control
Repository Watch demo
The anti-doomscrolling duck01 / 03
04

Sharing what
I learn.

President, STEM Club

Markham District High School

Grew the club from 15 to 190+ members in one year through hands-on workshops in PCB design, CAD and programming.

President, Student Council

Markham District High School

Led a 21-member council delivering events for 1,400+ students, coordinating logistics, budgets and promotion.

05

From schematic to bring-up.

HARDWARE
4-layer PCB design · Mixed-signal layout · Impedance control · Circuit debugging · DFM · PCBA
TOOLS
KiCad · Altium · PlatformIO · Fusion 360 · 3D printing · SMD soldering · DMM · Oscilloscope · Signal generator
CODE & PROTOCOLS
Embedded C/C++ · Python · I2C · SPI · UART · I2S · PWM · OpenCV

Every project starts with a connection.

END OF THE TRACE

Thanks for reading.

Have something in mind? Let’s build it.

Shiva's completed PCB business card hovering against black