About

Last Update: 4/2023

Ever since a young age, I've always had a passion for learning about technology and programming. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Chen, introduced me to Javascript on Khan Academy, and I am forever grateful for this eye-opening opportunity. I spent less time gaming and more time learning how to build the games I loved to play. I remember trying to build a Clash Royale clone through Khan Academy, though I was only able to replicate the menu screen (it still took a lot of work!). When I turned 11, I took a summer camp on Unity Game Development, and I had so much fun learning how to actually build games. From that point on, I would spend my weekends and mornings before school learning how to code. Here's the latest and greatest game I built as of now: https://v2.dylanlu.com/game

As a current student at Gunn High School, I've had the opportunity to work with many other really smart people in the tech industry. In the summer of 2022, I interned at a Bluetooth chip startup called Atmosic. My time there was spent learning all about computer engineering, and I developed the firmware that tests the evaluation boards before we send them off to customers. I was so lucky to be surrounded by all of these incredibly smart engineers, and I learned so much from each one of them. That summer was easily the best summer of my life (so far), and I had so much fun on our late-afternoon boba runs and the occasional trip to the golf range.

In my junior year, I had the opportunity to put my newfound knowledge about microcontrollers to use. I realized that it could all be used to solve a simple, yet frustrating problem: long lunch lines. Imagine trying to get to your club meeting, but you have to wait through this line...

My solution? LunchTrak. Think about the toll booths on highways and bridges. Does everyone have to stop their car and pay? No! They have FasTrak lanes so that you can quickly drive through without stopping. LunchTrak works very similarly, where students will have a wireless tag in their backpacks and will be able to walk through the exit without having to stop and type their student ID numbers. This project is a great application of the Atmosic Bluetooth chip since it only needs to beacon in the lunch line and it needs to be extremely low power. We plan on piloting this new system during summer school at Gunn. Here is my first prototype of the tag.

This is probably my most ambitious project so far. I have so many other projects that I've been working on in the past, but none really compare in the complexity and significance of this one.

In the future, I hope to learn more about computer engineering and start developing my own products. I think it would be cool to also learn about AI, especially with the latest ChatGPT craze.