TO DIVE OR NOT? · AN ENGINEER'S JOURNEY INTO OUR OCEANS
Taniya Shaffer · Software Engineer
Web developer by trade, diver by logbook. On the slow descent toward embedded systems for marine technology.
BEGIN DESCENT
I'm Taniya (Tuh-KNEE-yah) — a software engineer who builds for the web by profession and tinkers with the physical world by compulsion.
But my compass points deeper. The long-term goal is embedded software engineering for marine technology — firmware for the instruments, sensors, and vehicles that let humans understand and operate more efficiently in our oceans. I'm getting there the slow way: ESP32s and low-level protocols on one side, dive certifications, industry knowledge, and equipment service on the other, until the two meet.
When I'm not at a keyboard I'm probably underwater, at a printer bed, behind a laser cutter, or elbow-deep in ink, digital or analog.
divrnaut is where all of it surfaces. Welcome to my portfolio, please enjoy your dive.
A sampling from the surface (web), the deep (embedded), and the shore (fabrication). The full log lives on the projects page.
My UCF senior design capstone — a holographic Pokémon you interact with bare-handed, no headset or gloves. A Raspberry Pi does the OpenCV hand-tracking, a custom ATMEGA328p board wakes the webcam when someone walks up, and a React Native app picks which Pokémon appears in the Pepper's Ghost display. I was project manager and the translator between the team's hardware and software halves.
A 2U CubeSat built with UCF's Knights Air Observation Satellite team. I programmed an Arduino Uno to collect atmospheric and GPS data in Low Power Mode to stretch the mission's energy budget, then validated PCB schematics and footprints — tracing I2C and SPI buses and hand-soldering the sensor suite.
A hardware Pong build centered on the first publicly functional PS/2 interface for mouse input, translating mouse movement into paddle direction and speed. Built with Vivado High-Level Synthesis and verified with SystemVerilog testbenches simulating clock cycles, inputs, and outputs.
The pressure down here produces strange and wonderful creatures. A non-exhaustive collection of things I make and do.
Recreational diver. The reason this whole site points downward. Reefs, wrecks, and the occasional very judgmental grouper.
field footage →FDM prints for enclosures, dive accessories, and things that absolutely did not need to exist but do now.
field footage →Digital illustration and an ongoing web comic. Ink on screens, occasionally on skin (accidentally).
Read the comic ↗field footage →Low-level projects: microcontrollers, sensors, blinking things. Where the embedded dream gets prototyped.
field footage →Daily blogs and thought pieces — the bioluminescence of the deep.