evotech;

An open-source e-commerce platform

This is a team project that I lead as part of Aston University's team project module.

I lead a team of 8 people in designing, developing and deploying an e-commerce site built from the ground up using PHP, MariaDB, HTML, CSS and JS

Our team decided to create a website selling computer parts, something we all were familliar with and enthusiastic about.

Features:

Full stack e-commerce website
Functioning baskets and checkout process
Comprehensive API system
Strong administrative panel and inventory management
Beautifully designed
Secure, encrypted data transmission and storage
Flexible to end-users needs

I learnt a great deal about project management, protected workflows, continuous integrations and comprehensive unit testing during this endeavour, and ultimately the efforts of the entire team combined to create a high-quality full-stack platform that can be deployed and used in a real-world scenario

The source code contains insights not visibile when viewing the site as a customer such as the admin page :

As well as the development processes like the usage of GitHub actions and collaboration within the team

I contributed heavily to the project and here is a list of the things I did

Team Leadership

Created a supportive team environment, encouraging open communication and particiaption among all members
Organised regular team meetings

Infrastructure Setup

Established and configured GitHub repository, with protected workflows
Created and structured Discord server in an organised manner for collaboration

Protected System

Utilised access controls to protect project secrets
Created a comprehensive automated backup system
Implemented automated deployment pipelines (GitHub Actions)

Support and Mentoring

Provided support to team members offering guidance and resources
Conducted one-on-one mentoring for helping members

Documentation

Authored README.MD and CONTRIBUTING.MD
Created user-friendly guides for git usage and project setup

Database

Created and designed project database
Created scripts for generating dummy data

Deployment Scripts

Created scripts for automated deployment across various OS

Development and Testing

Took ownership of critical backend development tasks including :
Database interactions
API endpoints
Designed and created complete stack for the admin dashboard and inventory management system
Responsible for linking the frontend with the backend
Designed and executed comprehensive unit tests using PHPUnit

Quality Assurance

Conducted code reviews on all code submitted to main branch
Collaborated with frontend and backend teams to identify any crossfunctional issues

Tokumei

An open-source peer to peer encrypted messaging app

Tokumei is an application I created and designed as part of my A-Level Computer Science NEA

At the time, WhatsApp, a popular messaging app, and a number of other apps were under public scrutiny due to privacy policy changes invoked fears that Meta / Facebook could read your messages

The problem with these applications is that the very nature of them being closed-source and passing through a server means you can't completely trust it

The solution?

Why not send the messages directly to the recipient without a middle man?

The concept of peer-to-peer data transfer has been incredibly successful with things like torrents, and as such I decided to implement this in my application

By leveraging WebRTC and the PeerJS network, users are given a PeerID to host a connection with

Users can then connect to the supplied code and enjoy spy free encrypted messaging!

This application was designed, developed, deployed and tested completely by me.

Lazy DSi File Downloader

A tool for automated download, setup and configuration of homebrew on Nintendo DSi systems

Lazy DSi File Downloader was created in order to simplify the homebrew process outlined in dsi.cfw.guide

The naming was due to the fact that I felt too lazy to manually copy each of the files for each of my DSi systems I modded

Instead I spent even longer developing this app to automatically do all of this.

Features

Download and install the appropriate memory pit exploit corresponding to the DSi firmware version
Download and install / update TWiLight Menu++
Download and install the latest version of dumpTool
Download and install the latest version of Unlaunch
Detect and update an existing hiyaCFW installation
And install a larger list of homebrew

To handle the larger list of homebrew, I created a separate repository with a list of homebrew, download links, and instructions for my software to follow

This extensibility meant that more homebrew could be added to the download list whilst keeping the size of Lazy DSi File Downloader

Additionally, I created and maintained versions for Windows, macOS and supported Linux as well

This was achieved by using GitHub Actions to automatically produce binaries for the operating systems for each release

However, due to the security measures put in place on Windows, it became *more* difficult to use the app for new users, since they had to jump through hoops to allow unsigned code / create exceptions in their antivirus (as PyInstaller projects were automatically flagged as malware)

This ultimately led to the archival of the project, and the official homebrew guide dropping support for Lazy DSi File Downloader

Senpai

A Discord chat bot with versatile features

Senpai in action, searching for a supplied image via it's Anime lookup function

Senpai is a Discord bot that I wrote initially as a form of experimentation and to better understand Discord bots in general

Initially it was just a very basic bot that listened for "wys" to reply with "nm g wbu" (a common exchange of greetings here in the UK).

It then evolved into a bot capable of performing maths and more complex things.

Unlaunch, a bootcode exploit for the Nintendo DSi, came stock with a pirate ship wallpaper that wasn't like by many people. One of the members in the community had discovered a way to patch the application to use a specially formatted GIF file instead of the default background. This is a tedious method and requires image editing software to properly set the colour palette.

I created a Senpai command to automatically take any image and convert it to the proper format, whilst also taking a parameter to select whether or not dithering should be used

This functionality extended to being able to convert any image type to any image

As well as convert between video types

At the time, Senpai was being run on a fairly weak Raspberry Pi 2B+ on my home network, and so the conversion process was quite long

Instead, for use in the DSi Mode Hacking Discord Server, the code for conversion was added to TWLHelper

Senpai then went through a major redesign and rewrite from the ground up, she now lives on a much more powerful Ubuntu VPS

The current set of features include :

Stars - A system that uses senpais database to track how many stars a user has collected in a server (based on how many "star" reactions on their message)
Conversion - A system that converts between file types
Anime - A system that allows users to use any screencap of an anime and find out the exact show, episode, season and a small clip of the specified image

m kalam