Our Team
Meet the engineers behind CyberRod — Team s26-s26-t17-cyberrod.
Team Members
Two engineers with complementary expertise in firmware and cloud systems.
ZL
Zhenyao Liu
Firmware & Hardware Lead
Electrical and systems engineering student at UPenn specializing in embedded firmware development and hardware design for IoT systems.
Si917 Firmware
FreeRTOS Tasks
Ultrasonic Driver
SHT4x Driver
Fish Detection
OTA Implementation
Watchdog System
JL
Jeffrey Li
Cloud & Dashboard Lead
Systems engineering student at UPenn focused on cloud infrastructure, IoT dashboards, and full-stack web development for connected devices.
Azure VM
MQTT Broker
Node-RED Dashboard
Custom CSS
Cloud Deployment
Documentation
Showcase Website
Technology Contributions
Clear division of labor across firmware and cloud domains.
Zhenyao Liu — Firmware & Hardware
- Designed and implemented Si917 FreeRTOS task architecture with 5 concurrent tasks
- Wrote UART driver for ultrasonic distance sensor with 4-byte frame protocol parsing
- Developed I2C driver for SHT4x temperature/humidity sensor with CRC-8 validation
- Implemented fish detection algorithm with dual proximity thresholds (Near/Very Near)
- Built OTA firmware update system using HTTP OTAF v2 triggered via MQTT
- Designed hardware watchdog and safety systems (stack overflow, HardFault handlers)
Jeffrey Li — Cloud & Dashboard
- Deployed and configured Azure VM cloud infrastructure (20.230.132.231)
- Set up and managed MQTT broker (Mosquitto) on Azure with CyberRod topics
- Designed Node-RED dashboard through 6 iterations with FlowFuse Dashboard 2.0
- Created custom nautical-themed CSS with gradient backgrounds and visualization widgets
- Configured HTTP server for OTA firmware hosting and delivery
- Built project showcase website and managed documentation
Project Information
Course
ESE516 - Internet of Things for Embedded Systems
University
University of Pennsylvania
Semester
Spring 2026
Team
s26-s26-t17-cyberrod
Firmware Repository
Showcase Site