Jason Tran

Engineer · Duke University BME & ECE · What I've built and learned along the way

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STORM DAT: Automating Government Document Compliance So Analysts Can Focus on What Matters

A web-based application for automating government document compliance, reducing manual review time and improving accuracy.

Python Flask Docker Whisper

Mobile Development Generative AI

Mindfulness Coach: Building a Fully Offline, On-Device AI Coaching App with React Native and Google MediaPipe

A deep dive into the architecture and engineering of a privacy-first mobile mindfulness coach that runs entirely on-device using React Native and Google MediaPipe's on-device LLM capabilities.

React Native Expo Typescript MediaPipe

Web Development

MyKpopLists: Building a Scalable Social Platform for K-pop Enthusiasts

MyKpopLists is a full-stack social networking platform tailored for K-pop fans, featuring comprehensive artist databases, privacy-aware social interactions, AI-powered content tagging, and gamified community engagement.

Laravel Vue.js Inertia.js PostgreSQL +12 more

Linux & Networking

Personal Cloud Infrastructure: Transforming Legacy Hardware into a Secure, Self-Hosted Ecosystem

This project chronicles the journey of repurposing a nine-year-old gaming PC into a robust personal cloud and application server. It explores the motivations behind reclaiming digital independence, the architectural decisions made to ensure data sovereignty, and the technical challenges overcome in creating a secure, scalable, and versatile home lab environment.

Docker TrueNAS Scale ZFS Tailscale +1 more

Linux & Networking

PWOSPF Router: Bridging Classical Networking and Modern SDN with Interactive Virtualization

Building a production-grade network router that implements the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) using low-level C, integrated it with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) through OpenFlow, and packaged everything into an interactive, browser-based simulation environment.

C Docker Mininet OpenFlow +2 more

Biomedical Engineering Embedded Systems

EOG Sleep Mask: Detecting Secondary Sleep Strokes in Real-Time

A wearable, real-time stroke detection system disguised as a comfortable sleep eye mask. By utilizing electrooculography (EOG) to track eye movement and an onboard microcontroller to perform real-time signal processing, the device acts as an automated sentinel.

Arduino Op Amp EOG

Biomedical Engineering Python Automation

VitalCheck API: Building a Multi-Domain Health Intelligence Engine with Python, FastAPI, and Production-Grade ML

VitalCheck is a production-deployed REST API that delivers real-time health risk assessments across ten medical and wellness domains. Built with Python, FastAPI, and a suite of machine learning models, it provides a unified interface for clinical and biometric predictions — from diabetes and stroke risk to MRI-based brain tumor classification.

Python FastAPI UV Pydantic +3 more

Web Development

Building a Modern Developer Portfolio: From Terminal Emulation to Content Architecture

A full-stack developer portfolio platform built with Astro 5, React 19, and TypeScript—a content-first website that showcases technical projects, tutorials, and professional experience through multiple interactive interfaces.

Astro React Typescript Three.js +4 more

Embedded Systems

FPGA Wordle: Building a Complete Game Console from Transistors to Touchpoints

A deep dive into the design and implementation of FPGA Wordle, a fully hardware-implemented word-guessing game that runs on a custom five-stage pipelined MIPS processor, with real-time VGA display and PS/2 keyboard input — all built from first principles in Verilog and assembly.

FPGA MIPS Verilog WebAssembly

Explore Topics

Embedded Systems

Microcontroller firmware, IoT devices, FPGA digital logic design, and hardware-software integration.

Biomedical Engineering

Medical device software, health data analysis, biomedical signal processing, and clinical data applications with regulatory guidance.

Generative AI

LLM-powered applications, RAG pipelines, AI chatbots, and intelligent automation tools built with any language model API or open-source model.

Mobile Development

Cross-platform iOS and Android apps built with React Native and Expo, with custom REST API backends and cloud data sync.

Linux & Networking

VPS & NAS setup, Docker deployments, self-hosted services, reverse proxy configuration, and automated Linux environment management.

Web Development

Full-stack web applications, responsive websites, REST APIs, and modern web experiences.

Python Automation

Workflow automation, data pipelines, web scraping, REST APIs, data apps with Streamlit, Flask web services, and ML-powered tooling — all in Python.

Latest Posts

Embedded Systems

Animating Character Sprites with SDL3_image in the Multiversal Consciousness Engine

Learn how to implement a complete sprite animation pipeline in C++23 using SDL3 and SDL3_image. This tutorial covers loading horizontal sprite sheets, building a physics-driven animation state machine, and rendering animated characters with proper facing and scaling.

SDL Hands You a Raw Pointer — Here's How to Make C++ Clean It Up For You

Every C library follows the same contract: you call a `Create` function, you get a raw pointer, and you are now *personally responsible* for calling the matching `Destroy` function — in the right order, at the right time, even when errors happen.

Your Game Has 500 Objects — How Do You Store Them Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Cache Lines)?

This tutorial walks through the Multiversal Consciousness engine's actual solution: a type-erased Component Registry backed by contiguous arrays, with O(1) entity-to-component lookup, cache-friendly iteration, and a swap-and-pop deletion strategy that maintains array density. All without external ECS libraries.

Collapsing the Wavefunction into WebAssembly: Shipping Multiversal Consciousness to the Browser

This advanced tutorial walks you through every step of compiling a C++23/SDL3 game engine -- Multiversal Consciousness -- into WebAssembly using Emscripten, then deploying it as a static webpage anyone can play

Building a Physics Engine and Interactive World: Collisions, Forces, and the Strategy Pattern

In this tutorial, we will implement a complete AABB physics system with gravity, friction, and slide mechanics, as well as an extensible obstacle interaction framework using the Strategy pattern. By the end, you will understand how to create a robust physics pipeline and design flexible interactions for a 2D platformer game.

Building a Production-Ready Input System and Tile Renderer for a 2D Platformer

A deep dive into the design and implementation of a robust input handling system with action-state tracking and a layered tile map renderer with frustum culling, all built from scratch in C++23 on top of SDL3.

Taming the Rendering Beast: SDL3 Setup and Integration in the Multiversal Consciousness Engine

A comprehensive walkthrough of how the Multiversal Consciousness game engine initializes SDL3, manages resources with RAII, configures display settings, and implements a robust game loop. Learn how to set up SDL3 in a modern C++23 project with smart pointers and clean architecture.

Two Worlds, One Frame: Synchronizing Parallel Reality State Without Tearing the Simulation Apart

Imagine a game where a door unlocked in Reality A must also appear unlocked in Reality B — but the key that opened it only exists in Reality A's inventory, and the agent who picked it up is standing in a completely different position in Reality B. Some state is shared. Some state is independent. And when the player presses one button to switch realities, the entire world must pivot atomically — no system should ever observe a half-switched state during a frame.

Multiversal Consciousness: Building a Dual-Reality Game Engine from Scratch in Modern C++

What if a game world could exist in two places at once? Multiversal Consciousness is a custom-built 2D puzzle-platformer engine that lets designers create puzzles around parallel realities with shared and divergent state.

C++ECS SDL3 WebAssembly

Embedded Systems

10 Milliseconds or Failure: Architecting a Real-Time Sensor Pipeline Across Two Threads Without Locking Up the UI

A deep dive into the engineering of a real-time IMU processing pipeline that runs on a worker thread while communicating with a Qt Quick UI on the main thread. Learn how to use `std::atomic` for lock-free shutdown signaling, Qt's queued signals for cross-thread communication, and self-correcting timing loops to maintain a 100 Hz sample rate without ever blocking the UI thread.

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