Projects 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).

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.

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.

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.