Clay P. McPherson — Engineering Project Portfolio

Hex Drone Build

2026

I built this autonomous hex drone from carbon fiber sheets I cut with a CNC router. Most of the electronics are used or salvaged. Wrote some code to simulate its flight duration and optimize my battery selection.

Drone Prop Dyno

2026

A test stand that sweeps a drone motor across its whole throttle range while measuring thrust and current draw, so I can size props and batteries from real data instead of guessing.

CNC Routing Bathymetry From Autonomous Boat

2025

I mapped a lakebed with my autonomous boat, then carved a wooden relief to scale with my CNC router.

Autonomous 6x6 Rover Build

2025

Rover with custom written flight controller based on Teensy 4.1 (arduino compatible microcontroller) and raspberry pi 4b. Performs autonomous waypoint missions. 4 steering wheels rotated by 2 actuators pulling on bicycle brake cables. Can turn in place or make gradual forward/reverse turns.

Robot Parade

2024

Nothing technical or new here. Just for fun, here’s a video of my robot, N150, participating in the 2024 Texas Robotics parade.

N150 Sonar Restoration

2024

This robot, the Nomadic Technologies N150, is about 30 years old. I restored functionality to its array of 16 ultrasonic rangefinders by integrating some modern...

Gumption Trap II Bathymetry Demonstration

2024

Gumption Trap II embarks on her second mission on Town Lake for a proper demonstration of her bathymetric surveying capabilities following some software and hardware...

Project MOAR

2024

I turned a shop vac into an autonomous roomba style vacuum cleaner. The 4 horsepower beast uses 10” wheels, an ebike battery, and automotive windshield wiper motors to handle...

Bike Frame Fabrication

2024

I wanted to learn MIG welding, so I built this bike frame. It’s mostly 1/8” wall tube 6061 T6 Aluminium. All the tubing is either 2” or 1” OD. I used a tubing notcher with hole...

Auto Solar Boat V2 Build

2024

This project is a complete rebuild of my earlier autonomous boat project. It’s bigger, faster, smarter, and has more than 4x the power. This boat is called Gumption Trap II.

Project Mecha-Bevo

2024

This was a group project for a UT graduate course, Robot Mechanism Design, in which we created a steerable walking robot driven by a unique dynamically adjustable linkage...

Reverse Engineering a 90's Robot

2024

I bought this 25+ year old robot at auction in a non-functioning state knowing almost nothing about it. The robot is a Nomadic Technologies N150. It has an interesting...

Mapping the Floor of Ladybird Lake

2023

I used my solar powered autonomous boat equipped with a sonar depth sounder to collect depth measurements as it followed a predetermined path. I later put these data points...

Propeller Testing Dynamometer

2023

I built this machine to test my own propeller designs. The dynamometer gradually revs up the BLDC motor which drives the propeller, then gradually revs it back down while...

Autonomous Sonar Depth Plotting

2023

I added some functionality and other improvements to my self driving solar powered boat. The main addition is a sonar echo sounder altimeter. This allows the robot to take...

Autonomous Solar Drone-Ship

2022

I created this self driving drone ship to autonomously navigate through a predetermined series of waypoints using magnetometry and GPS. It’s powered by a 50W solar panel,...

3 Axis Desktop CNC Mill

2022

I designed and built this machine from scratch with a $500 budget. It’s capable of 3 axis cnc milling of wood, plastics, and soft metals. It uses 4 stepper motors and...

Password Guessing Robot

2022

I built this robot to brute force unlock a car radio. I bought the radio used, not knowing it would have an anti-theft lockout. This robot could attempt every possible passcode...

Robotic Cat Toy Launcher

2022

I completed this project in a single day, challenging myself to use only components I already had. I used motors from a broken printer to drive the launch mechanism. I 3D...

Autonomous Coffee Maker

2022

This electronics project allowed me to add some utility to a cheap coffee maker. I integrated a microcontroller into the switching circuit which automatically begins brewing...

Mega-Lithophane

2022

I recycled a broken TV by turning it into a giant lithophane. I stripped away the unnecessary components and rewired the backlight into the power supply. I replaced the broken...

Candy 3D Printer

2020

This was a group project I completed my senior year of college at the University of Texas at Austin. The open ended assignment was to create a functional food 3D printer from...