Thomas Yu Contact

Thomas Yu

Senior at Santa Margarita Catholic High School. I built a bird feeder that recognises 555 species and published a paper on it, I lead programming for FRC Team 5805, I write the Catalyst robotics library, and I design my own circuit boards.

School
Santa Margarita Catholic HS, class of 2027
Team
FRC 5805 SMbly Required, lead programmer
Numbers, a robot my code drives. Grab it.
1
peer-reviewed paper
1
U.S. patent filed
555
bird species recognised
4
competition robots
5
apps in the Catalyst suite
339k
views on my channel
Research

Ornimetrics

A bird feeder that knows who's eating. Peer-reviewed, patent pending.

The research
AI for wildlife rescue

COMU

An AI front desk for wildlife rescue.

COMU
Robotics library

Catalyst

The FRC robot library I write, and its apps.

The library
FRC Team 5805

Robotics

Lead programmer, Team 5805. Take a robot apart by scrolling.

The robots
Hardware

O0X

My six-layer board, live in 3D. Grab it.

The boards
Bilibili

TomAs测评

My Mandarin tech channel: 1,510 followers, 339k views.

The channel

About

Hi, I'm Thomas

I like building the whole thing: the model, the code, the board it runs on and the box it sits in.

Bilingual in English and Mandarin. Spent this summer folding RNA at Carnegie Mellon's computational biology program. Swim for Santa Margarita, and teach robotics and 3D-printing workshops to elementary-school kids.

Right now

  • Catalyst 2.0 taking the library to Systemcore, with Numbers as the first robot on it.
  • O0X rev A hand-assembling the boards for the next feeder.
  • COMU bringing the assistant online for the care center's website.
  • MOTE H1 designing my own RK3576 computer board.
CodePythonJavaC++TypeScriptDartWGSL
AIPyTorchYOLOQLoRAllama.cppHailoRKNN
RobotsWPILibPhoenix 6PathPlannerChoreoAprilTags
MakeKiCad6-layer PCBCAD3D printingSpline4K video

School

  • Santa Margarita Catholic HS class of 2027
  • Eight AP courses 5s in Calculus AB, Chinese and U.S. History
  • Book awards Rochester Institute of Technology, High Point University
  • Carnegie Mellon Pre-College, Computational Biology
  • Varsity letter FIRST Robotics, 100+ hours a build season

Leading

  • Open Apparatus chapter leader: robotics and 3D-printing workshops, 80+ kids
  • NAPAA chapter leader: physics competitions and guest speakers
  • Key Club media director
  • WWCC volunteer developer
  • Team 5805 mentoring the newer programmers

Off the clock

  • Swimming Santa Margarita, Scholar-Athlete every season
  • Birds the reason Ornimetrics exists
  • Biology RNA folding at Carnegie Mellon
  • Physics and anything with a datasheet
  • Video filming and editing for the channel

My setup

  • RTX 5070 Ti trains COMU's models overnight
  • Orange Pi 5 my on-device LLM experiments, on its NPU
  • Home server my own Git host, on Tailscale
  • 3D printer enclosures, mounts, robot parts
  • KiCad + FreeCAD boards and the boxes they go in

Timeline

So far

  1. 2026
    • Catalyst 2.0 release candidate for FIRST's new Systemcore controller (October).
    • COMU built for the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center.
    • O0X, my first six-layer board, sent to fabrication (August).
    • Catalyst 1.0 released in July; 1.12 three weeks later.
    • Carnegie Mellon Pre-College Program in Computational Biology (June–July).
    • Coolest Projects Judge's Favourite; first place in AI at Google IgniteCS and at Game Gala.
    • Port Hueneme district finalists with Leviticus.
    • Ornimetrics paper presented at ADCOM 2026 in Vancouver (February); patent application filed.
  2. 2025
    • Lead programmer of the varsity robotics team.
    • Ventura County Regional winners with Genesis, and Beach Blitz winners with Exodus.
    • SparkHub, a peer-tutoring platform, founded.
  3. 2024
    • Ornimetrics started.
    • TomAs测评 channel launched on Bilibili.
    • JV captain of the robotics team.
  4. 2023
    • Joined FRC Team 5805 as a freshman.

Live

Lately on GitHub

    Everything on GitHub

    More

    Other things I've made

    Catalyst Tab 1.0: diagnose it where it sits
    Catalyst TabRobot diagnostics on a handheld Tab5: my own firmware and UI on the ESP32-P4.
    RNA Fold Lab comparing Nussinov and Zuker folds
    RNA Fold LabTwo RNA folding algorithms side by side, in the browser. Built at CMU.
    Bezel's wall-panel specimen
    BezelMy UI style: Material structure, Apple-style glass, spring motion.
    The MOTE Linux board
    MOTEA business-card-sized Linux computer.
    spring(0.3, 0.1)
    DetentFluid motion across SwiftUI, Compose, Flutter and CSS, as a Claude Code plugin.
    • SparkHub a peer-tutoring platform where students run courses. Source
    • Sequence aligner DNA and protein alignment, native Windows app + Python. Try it
    • Pill dispenser reminds and dispenses, built with Key Club for 30 seniors.
    • Workshops 10+ robotics and 3D-printing sessions for 80+ kids, as an Open Apparatus chapter leader.

    Recognition

    Awards

    2026
    Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Advanced Computing (ADCOM), Vancouver
    2026
    U.S. patent application filed for Ornimetrics' species-adaptive feeding system
    2026
    Coolest Projects, Judge's Favourite
    2026
    Google IgniteCS Programming Expo, first place, AI category
    2026
    Game Gala, first place, AI category
    2026
    Rochester Institute of Technology Book Award
    2025
    High Point University Book Award

    Contact

    Say hello

    Email is the fastest way to reach me.

    yu_thomas1226@outlook.com

    GitHub Hugging Face Bilibili

    Local business that needs a website? I build those too.