For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by science and technology. From lego robots to computer programming, everything seemed like candy.
When I was in middle school, I built a remote controlled robot using legos that was able to swim across my pool in a tupperware container! A little while later, I got a lego model of a tractor. Since a model doesn’t do much, I set to work adding some motors so it could actually pick up something like a bunch of pennies. After that, my proudest project was having two bots on top of each other to drive and fire darts. This actually took a while to figure out because I needed two controllers as well. To make it easier to aim, I started looking up how old cannons used a kind of cork-screw mechanism to raise and lower the barrel which is exactly what I ended up doing.
After a couple years I moved on to working with real electronics! (Yes, I did burn my fingers on the soldering iron more than once) My first circuit was a very loud and annoying 555 timer hooked up to a piezo buzzer that really annoyed my cats. But, that was still a little bulky on a breadboard so I purchased an IC socket and soldered together a very small circuit I could insert into my breadboard.
High school was when I first started learning computer programming. Starting out with an old C primer-plus textbook, I wrote my first 4 operation calculator program. It was awful of course! For my senior year, I led a group of web design students to completely redesign our school’s website that hadn't changed in 10 years. But, due to new security policies, the district has taken over the school’s website so my work and even references to it are no longer visible. But, I keep a backup here: http://seanleapley.com/unionmine Shortly after their new website went live, I received the award “Excellence in Student Achievement in Business and Technology” from my school.
In high school I was also part of a tech team that went around the school fixing computers. This was again back before all the security security policies prevented students from helping. This was also the time in my life I was part of something absolutely amazing, FIRST robotics. FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. https://www.firstinspires.org Those were an absolutely amazing 4 years of my life which I will go into much greater detail on another page. In the picture, I'm the guy with the most buttons! I also created their website which I keep a backup of here: http://seanleapley.com/robotics
These days I still continue to learn more about science and technology even though time is shorter. (yes, I still play with Legos) Sometimes I work on my drone, or play around with my raspberry PI. My current projects revolve around app development, game design, and robotics. I’m hoping to make it to UC Davis to major in computer science so I can really get started on my dream of building robots that improve society.