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TThulani
R&D Lab // Sandbox & Prototypes

Engineering Lab & Technical Explorations

A dedicated space for early prototypes, real-time graphics shaders, autonomous AI agents, and physical IoT telemetry experiments.

The Philosophy of The Lab

While the Work section contains fully realized production systems, The Lab showcases active experimentation. Here I benchmark bleeding-edge web APIs, stress-test microcontrollers, and document engineering curiosities.

Category:
Status:
Three.js2024
Prototype

Interactive 3D Portfolio Scene

Prototyping a lightweight WebGL / Three.js viewport featuring custom fragment shaders, reactive cursor raycasting, and GPU particle flows without bogging down mobile frames.

  • ›Custom procedural noise fragment shader
  • ›Targeted 60 FPS on low-power mobile GPUs
  • ›Progressive fallback for devices without WebGL2
< 15
Draw Calls
< 45 KB
Bundle Impact
Three.jsReact Three FiberGLSL ShadersWebGPU APITypeScript
AI2024
In Progress

AI Portfolio Assistant & Tool-Calling Agent

An experimental conversational agent that uses OpenAI function calling and vector embeddings to answer inquiries about technical case studies, resume history, and system design decisions.

  • ›Streaming responses via Server-Sent Events
  • ›Deterministic JSON tool calling for resume queries
  • ›Context window pruning for sub-200ms latency
~175ms
TTFT Latency
96%
Tool Accuracy
OpenAI APILangChainVector EmbeddingsServer-Sent EventsTypeScript
Cloud2024
Completed

Cloudflare Worker Sub-10ms Edge Cache

Benchmarking edge compute execution times and distributed KV storage lookups to deliver sub-10ms dynamic JSON responses worldwide without central origin hits.

  • ›Zero cold starts via V8 Isolate execution
  • ›Geo-distributed cache tagging and instant purging
  • ›Automated global telemetry tracking
< 9ms
Edge TTFB
300+
Global PoPs
Cloudflare WorkersWorkers KVTypeScriptV8 IsolatesWrangler
UI/UX2024
Experiment

Interactive AWS Architecture Visualizer

A node-graph canvas prototype to visualize event-driven serverless flows: tracing AppSync GraphQL requests through Lambdas, SQS FIFO queues, and DynamoDB single-table partitions.

  • ›Interactive packet flow animation along SVG paths
  • ›Live JSON event payload inspector
  • ›Exportable infrastructure state snapshots
60 FPS
Render Speed
50+ Supported
Graph Nodes
React FlowTypeScriptSVG CanvasTailwind CSSAWS Architecture SDK
IoT2024
Prototype

IoT Real-Time Telemetry Dashboard

Testing bidirectional ESP32 microcontroller telemetry streams with binary WebSocket payloads, real-time Chart.js dials, and MQTT broker failover protocols.

  • ›Sub-50ms sensor telemetry updates in browser
  • ›Binary array buffer packing for minimal bandwidth
  • ›Automatic exponential backoff reconnects
60 Hz Updates
Live Hz
18 Bytes
Packet Overhead
ESP32MQTTWebSocketsChart.jsC++Node.js
Performance2023
Completed

Zero-JS Static Partial Hydration Audit

Analyzing Astro Islands vs traditional React SPA hydration waterfalls to achieve perfect 100/100 Core Web Vitals on low-end Android mobile devices over 3G throttling.

  • ›Zero runtime JavaScript shipped for static content
  • ›Sub-1.0s Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on 3G
  • ›Automated Lighthouse CI performance budgets
100 / 100
Lighthouse Score
0 ms
Total Blocking
Astro IslandsLighthouse CIWeb Vitals APIChromium DevTools

Have an interesting experiment or idea?

I am always open to exploring novel technical architectures, testing new hardware protocols, or collaborating on open-source prototypes.