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

Three Flyover flight radars in blue, tan and black, on angled stands. The screens show a radar scope with range rings and labelled aircraft.

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.

I've sold more than 200 units on Etsy, in four languages.

More about Flyover

Map view, live over Toronto.
Air Canada 828 to Copenhagen, 13.5 nm away and climbing.

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. I reworked all three websites so that a customer who finds one of them is pointed to what the others offer, which brings more leads into the group as a whole.

I also build the tools the office runs on: the rental-tracking software, the digitized inventory, and the move to Odoo ERP, from picking it in a fit-gap analysis through data migration and training the staff. I led the company's Canada Digital Adoption Program project.

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

[email protected]

Co-op roles, projects, or questions about anything here.

Or send it as a paper plane