Render of a robot arm driving a haptic lever that feeds a bench drill press

Shoalin Harischandre

Electronic engineer at the University of Pretoria. I design across the whole stack, from transistor-level chip blocks to circuit boards to the firmware that runs them.

Render from DJDB8, my final-year project

One system, three layers

Most of my projects cross from silicon to board to code, so the hardware and the software are designed for each other rather than glued together at the end.

Silicon

Integrated circuits

Analog and mixed-signal CMOS blocks, designed and simulated at transistor level, with layout.

Cadence, SPICE

Board

Power and PCB design

Motor inverters, gate drive, sensing front-ends and the boards that carry them, from schematic to bring-up.

KiCad, bench instruments

Firmware

Embedded control

Real-time control loops, field-oriented motor control and the tools for watching them run.

STM32, ESP32, PIC, C and assembly

The DJDB8 bench: robot arm, haptic lever unit, laptop console and drill press
Final-year project, 2026

DJDB8 haptic drill-press feed

A motorised lever that feeds a drill press and pushes back with the cutting force, so the operator feels the bit bite through the handle.

1 kHzbilateral link
16 : 1printed herringbone reducer
1.3 %force error, closest run
330 nshardware dead time
Open the case study

About

I'm a final-year BEng Electronic Engineering student at the University of Pretoria, heading into a masters in microelectronics.

I like building real, working systems and learning whatever they need, whether that's a chip block, a motor driver or a web console. I built this site myself, renders included.

  1. From 2027

    Masters, microelectronics

    University of Pretoria

  2. 2023 to 2026

    BEng Electronic Engineering

    University of Pretoria

  3. 2017 to 2022

    Raisethorpe High Secondary

    Matriculated with four distinctions