Thomas Knout

Thomas Knout

Mechanical engineering student in Toronto. I design small pieces of hardware, from the enclosure to the circuit board to the software that drives it, and then use them every day at my desk.

Special Project Lead at Diversified Power. Previously a Quality & Technical Engineering Intern at BMW Group Canada.

[email protected] All projects

Render of Trackside: a dark grey sloped enclosure with a four-channel screen showing Spotify 72, Discord 42, Game 88 and Master 30, three white keys, and four faders with dice-shaped caps.

Trackside

A desk mixer for per-app volume

A USB desk mixer that gives Windows programs physical faders. Four 60 mm faders, three keys and a 2.79" bar display sit beside the keyboard. Each fader controls one program (Discord, Spotify, a game, whatever's in front) or the master volume, and one key press switches the faders to another bank of programs.

Custom PCB, firmware and a desktop app, with about 3,800 automated tests behind them. The fader caps are dice, so the pips tell you which channel is which.

How it's built

Hardware

  • Custom PCB designed in KiCad, assembled by JLCPCB
  • ESP32-S3
  • 16-bit ADC for the faders
  • Low-profile hot-swap keys
  • Addressable RGB lighting

As built

Flyover

A desktop flight radar. Hardware, firmware and cloud backend, June 2026 to now.

A palm-sized flight radar that sits on a desk and shows the real aircraft flying overhead, live. I designed and built it end to end: the enclosure, the ESP32 firmware, the backend that feeds it, and the tools that make and support it.

200+ sold on Etsy, in four languages.

More about Flyover

Live traffic over Toronto, with the airports marked.
An A220 from Saskatoon, 7.8 nm out and descending into Toronto.

Earlier projects

Experience

Diversified Power logo

Diversified Power Inc.

Special Project Lead

Diversified Power, Ormond and Diversified Lifting Solutions are sister companies in hydraulic tooling and lifting. My job there is different every day, which is most of the fun.

The big one was moving the company off a DOS-based system and onto Odoo. I ran it pretty much start to finish: sat down with everyone to see how they actually work, sorted out problems as they came up, tested everything, moved the data over and trained people one-on-one. Jobs used to live on paper. Now they're all online where everyone can see them, and we can finally sell online too. Before that, I got our rentals off paper and onto proper software, and ran our Canada Digital Adoption Program project.

Day to day I help keep things running. I run our inventory counts, from pulling the numbers to checking the results, and dig in when the stock values don't add up. I built a service request form for the website so customers give us the details we need up front, which means fewer mistakes, better leads and fewer phone calls. I also redid the websites for all three companies (Diversified Power, Ormond and Diversified Lifting Solutions), and Ormond's brought in more rentals.

And when customers need equipment, I help them figure out what fits, price it out, and go on site visits to show them the ordering and service portals we build.

BMW Group logo

BMW Group Canada

Quality & Technical Engineering Intern

Ran vehicle test-fitments and software validations, and kept the special-tool inventory and calibrated equipment in order. Compiled service-trend KPIs and went through retailer feedback for process fixes. Reviewed and updated technical bulletins, and prepared reports for engineering, legal and police.

Contact

For inquiries

[email protected]