Richard Li's homepage on Richard Li

Dag of nouns

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A graph of noun meanings from Open English WordNet. Search a meaning, then follow what it is, what it can be, and the meanings that sit beside it.

Full screen

Skin acne classification (ML@P)

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Created the main ML model behind the skin acne classification pipeline using CV principles. Work done for startup Skinapse.

Split keyboard PCB and FW with voice transcription

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Responsible for keyboard FW and AI voice module: use nRF with thingy53 to do local keyword detection, with bluetooth for voice to text transcription on PC.

Nook

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Woohoo! Finally won my first hackathon! Focusing completely on the MVP (minimal viable product) was what allowed us to be successful.

Hackathon description

Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/nook-d0fl7g

Inspiration

Apartment finders focus on immediate apartment specifications, but not the surrounding environment. As college students (as well as interns, new grads, new parents), we just want minimal apartment specifications for minimal price, where we really care about the surrounding amenities and surrounding environment - what services we can easily access, either by foot or by mobile.

Catapult Hackathon @ Purdue

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This semester, I took part in a group of (new) friends in Purdue’s Catapult hackathon (https://catapulthack-2026.devpost.com/).

We didn’t win, but I stil learned so much, and used this experience to win another hackathon!

Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/machine-learn View the github readme for more information!

Huge thanks to my teammates for letting me hop on at the last second! They are all amazing people, and I would be honored to work with them again:

Self statistics system v1

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: v2 is now up and running at https://self-statistics-system-v2.web.app/

Now with documentation in the app! Just click in too see information about it.

Abstract

Complete end to end irl game status screen created for motivation, using journal entry analysis.

Intended usage: record moment to moment progress (eg: attended to my microprocessors class for 50 minutes) using your voice. See instant progress against across your skills and characteristics (eg: +1 exp computer engineering) and final accumulated statistics (computer engineering total exp: 50; total level: 5, etc).

Mandate of the Right of Consciousness

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Why should artificial intelligence not dominate over human beings?

This seems to be a pretty popular question right now. The standard argument seems to be something like “Humans can be seen as an evolution of primates / monkeys. And look how we treat them. Who is to say that general Ai, a cognitively superior being, won’t treat us the same way?”

The subset of human beings that treat animals poorly typically due so because it is easier do treat them poorly than properly– easier in the sense of cost-wise (cheaper), time-wise (faster), or cognitively-wise (forgetfulness / incompetence). ie: Due to external environmental factors or internal skill-issues, which is then evaluated by the human brain and put into action.

Firebase tutorial + Fixes

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This project

This project follows a tutorial to create a live chatroom with google-sign-in and ai-responses: Each user can see their own messages and all other messages, live. Each message will have an ai response that prefers poetry.

Firebase

Google Firebase is really cool! The tutorial was very out-of-date, but fixing it up allowed for some amazing demos. The possibilities Firebase offers at its effective free tier (not having to pay any money but still having to connect a credit card) was much more useful than I thought: (with everything set up) one github push leads to the update of the whole website after a couple minutes without fuss.

AI Journal (1)

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My new obsession lately has been trying to get an AI journalling app up and running.

I’ve had this thought for a while now, and, after checking in with a couple online sources, it seems like no one has done it:

using journalling to create a game like statistics system for self motivation.

The basic pipeline would be:

voice -> journal entry -> decompose into actions -> generalize into skills, characteristics -> update character graph

Inevitability's blessing: Counter to Roki's basilisk

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fun thought-conclusion I had over winter break: If something will come no matter what, then make it come in the best way possible.

Roko’s Basilisk

Roko’s Basilisk is an internet “myth”, in essence, but it points to a deeper truth if you don’t straw-man the argument.

For those that don’t know, Roko’s Basilisk is a thought experiment at what a ‘info-hazard’ would be– knowledge that brings harm simply by knowing it. The argument (in what I believe to be it’s most steel-man form) is: There will eventually be an all-powerful (artificial) intelligence sometime in the future, between now and the heat-death of the universe. This entity might retroactivity punish those who did not help bring about its existence (eg: harm descendants) in retribution, including those that only knew but did not act nor aid development of such a entity. As such, mere knowledge of this argument means one must act toward the development of this entity lest face ‘infinite’ punishment, which in turns makes this entity more likely to be brought into existence.

Visualized neural network

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Visualization of a machine learning model, and making its difficulties intuitive. Display a 784 (28 * 28) -> 16 -> 16 -> 10 neural network using spheres as neurons and lines as connectors in threejs to completely visualize a simple neural network. Live learning using the MNIST dataset.

Live demo: Hugging Face Spaces

Sample image:

Details

Over winter break, I wanted to get more into machine learning. So, I started poking around with the MNIST database, and eventually made my own little project. This is a writeup for that, where I write my own thoughts down.

College essays

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What is the point of college essays?

They never mention it, but it’s for a declaration of self-identity.

Identity

College Apps

College applications were 2 years ago for me, and (aside from the mental breakdown that comes from having to assess and verbalize yourself and your own future at the most flexible and thus indecisive time of your time, at least for me) I’m only now starting to see their intent.

Why Blog?

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What is the point of a web-blog?

Well, that’s it, isn’t it?

Why Blog

I mean, I’m sure you can go online and search, and there’ll be innumerously many reasons. But personally? I have had this itch in the back of my skull for a while now, and so, here and now, I will write out this declaration of intent:

I blog for the goals of this blog, and the goals of this blog are:

Heartbeat sensor using pure components

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This is a virtual display of my heartbeat sensor I (with a lab partner) made, debugged, and presented for Purdue’s ECE 20008 Lab.

Pipeline: IR LED -> finger -> phototransistor sensor -> filtered signal (high pass, low pass) -> 1bit ADC -> LED indicator

Demo video

Key Points

Each module in the pipeline was individually tested, confirmed, and integrated. Using this method, the project was sucessful overall!

Details

Full technical details, SPICE schematics, and oscilloscope measurements in writeup here: Final Project Report

Portfolio Website

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This portfolio website is built with Jekyll (al-folio fork) and deployed at https://richardhcli.com. It features a clean, responsive design with a timeline-based project showcase.

Features

Responsive Design: Works seamlessly on desktop and mobile devices
Timeline View: Projects are displayed in a chronological timeline
Automatic Deployment: GitHub Actions handles build and deployment
Technical Blog: Engineering write-ups alongside project pages

Technologies Used

Jekyll 4.x
Liquid templates & SCSS
GitHub Actions
GitHub Pages / custom domain

Getting Started

To run this site locally:

Public shared wall

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Live hosted: https://pythingsrhl.pythonanywhere.com/

A public text file that anybody can write and read from, with persistence (stored in database).

Also, a stored JSON that requires an API key to read and write from.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi! Richard Li here.

My interests

There’s really only one thing that interests me technically: machine learning architecture, and improving automated thinking processes. Specifically, these factors of ML:

Applied psychology: proving how we think mathematically, instead of just emperical observation. What is intelligence?
Efficiency: improving how we reason and learn by knowing exactly what we are working with. How can we grow?
Potential: intelligence is arguably the most important quality we have. What insights can we do with more?

To this end, I am interested in the following implementations:

Resume

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Opening the résumé. If it does not open, open the PDF.