Baron Li

A production-shaped HTTP/1.1 server written from raw TCP sockets, with no web framework and no library doing the hard part. It serves a real-time collaborative drawing board and an adaptive-bitrate video platform on top of protocols implemented by hand.

• Built a multi-threaded HTTP/1.1 server on Python TCP sockets, including custom parsers that process raw byte streams and multipart form data.
• Implemented the WebSocket protocol directly from the RFC, including the SHA-1 upgrade handshake and payload masking, to power a real-time, multi-user drawing board.
• Architected an authentication pipeline with bcrypt password hashing, SHA-256 session tokens, and TOTP-based two-factor authentication.
• Engineered an Adaptive Bitrate Streaming pipeline with FFmpeg, transcoding MP4 uploads into HLS renditions and capturing thumbnails automatically.

Karaoke in the browser with independently mixable vocal and instrumental tracks, and lyrics that stay locked to the audio. The hard part was sample-accurate sync and per-track gain control in the Web Audio graph.

• Developed a responsive app with real-time lyric synchronization and dual-track audio playback.
• Engineered a custom audio hook over Howler.js and the Web Audio API, manipulating GainNodes for independent vocal and instrumental volume mixing.
• Wrote a RegEx parser for LRC lyric files, rendering an auto-scrolling teleprompter driven by React refs for smooth DOM updates.
• Integrated a backend endpoint that ingests YouTube links and processes them into playable karaoke tracks.

A community recipe-sharing platform built for a software engineering course. Full-stack, with a complete account lifecycle including password reset, which is where most student projects stop short.

• Engineered a secure full-stack authentication system with registration, login, and an end-to-end password reset workflow in PHP and MySQL.
• Built an interactive recipe browser with client-side search and filtering via JavaScript DOM manipulation.
• Developed a responsive interface that holds up across desktop and mobile.

The classic cellular automaton in C, an exercise in getting multi-dimensional array handling and generation stepping exactly right, with no room to hide behind a garbage collector.

• Engineered the cell state transition logic to Conway's rules, with careful multi-dimensional array handling and precise output formatting.

A self-hosted home automation system running on a VM, with NFC cards mounted around the house as one-tap physical switches.

• Integrated smart lights and switches into a centralized Home Assistant system.
• Deployed Home Assistant on a virtual machine for scalable management and additional service integrations.
• Configured NFC tags as physical cards for one-tap control of individual lights and switches.