{"id":31561,"date":"2018-05-31T14:40:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T21:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=31561"},"modified":"2018-05-31T14:40:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T21:40:47","slug":"tod-e-kurt-co-founder-of-thingm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/tod-e-kurt-co-founder-of-thingm\/","title":{"rendered":"Tod E. Kurt, Co-founder of ThingM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our guest this week is Tod E. Kurt. Tod runs <a href=\"https:\/\/thingm.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ThingM,<\/a> an IoT device studio in Pasadena. He is creator of the blink(1) USB notification light and BlinkM Smart LED. He co-founded <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.crashspace.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CRASH Space<\/a>, a Los Angeles hackerspace. He is the author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2smOVxU\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hacking Roomba<\/a>\u201d and long ago worked on cameras for Mars probes.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/451950135&#038;color=%23ff5500&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;show_teaser=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/cool-tools-show-and-tell\/id605920446?mt=2\">Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/feedpress.me\/cooltoolsshow\">RSS<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/1cOreq5SCUnRq7KlMRaoj_2d4wTJVdaPLrMJXqzw-dyA\/edit?usp=sharing\">Transcript<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/tracking.feedpress.it\/link\/7810\/9323012\/451950135-cool-tools-125-tod-kurt.mp3\">Download MP3<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/tag\/cool-tools-show\/\">See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Show notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/Stickvise-300x184.jpg\" alt=\"Stickvise\" width=\"300\" height=\"184\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-31565\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/Stickvise-300x184.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/Stickvise-1024x628.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/Stickvise.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2H8G3AL\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stickvise PCB Vise with Standard Nylon Jaws<\/a> ($30)<br \/>\n\u201cThe main difference between this vise and other vises you might use to hold your work is that it maintains your work parallel to your desktop. And that&#8217;s the other thing: it isn&#8217;t attached to a surface. It just kind of sits on your desk. It&#8217;s very small, and it&#8217;s made for doing electronics work. But I&#8217;ve seen people use it for things like jewelry and other sort of small work where you&#8217;re kind of on a desk and you need to have something that&#8217;s held flat. And the reason why you need it to be held flat for electronics is because you don&#8217;t want the parts to slide off as you&#8217;re soldering them down. If you&#8217;re doing surface mount work, it&#8217;s just like things are just kind of sitting on top and then you have to solder them down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/viltrox-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"viltrox\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-31567\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/viltrox-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/viltrox-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/viltrox-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/viltrox.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2slkl80\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Viltrox Super Slim LED Light Pane<\/a> ($34)<br \/>\n&#8220;Anyone who has a work bench has had to try to solve the problem of how do you light up the space you&#8217;re working in, and for me I&#8217;ve tried fluorescent light tubes, the standard long tubes. I&#8217;ve tried LED strip that I then stuck to a base and then had that. But they&#8217;ve all been a little fiddly, and it becomes hard to either adjust the brightness or adjust the color temperature, which I&#8217;ve really liked lately. A lot of lights now you can change if you want them to be a noon, like a bluish-white that you&#8217;d see during noonday, or a more orangey-yellow white, one you&#8217;d see during the evening. And now there&#8217;s all these lights, all these LED-based lights out there, where you can have a knob to tune the color temperature. And this LED light panel, it&#8217;s about maybe six inches on a side, and it&#8217;s normally meant to be mounted on top of a camera for photography people to take pictures and to light their subject, but I found you can just mount it above your bench and it becomes a great task light.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/koolertron-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"koolertron\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-31564\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/koolertron-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/koolertron-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/koolertron.jpg 1001w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2LbOTjC\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Koolertron 4.3&#8243; LCD Digital USB Microscope<\/a> ($79)<br \/>\n&#8220;I stumbled across this little microscope, and it&#8217;s perfect because it&#8217;s super portable. I can just kind of drag it around wherever I need it, and I&#8217;ll stick circuit boards that I&#8217;m looking at to see how the manufacturing of them went. When I&#8217;m soldering stuff, sometimes I&#8217;ll stick the circuit board I&#8217;m working on underneath it to see it. And because it is fully-self-contained \u2014 it&#8217;s a digital device, digital microscope, but it&#8217;s got a screen built in, and the screen&#8217;s good \u2014 I don&#8217;t need a computer and have to look up at a computer all the time. I can just look at it. And so it&#8217;s just brilliant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/asuschromebox-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"asuschromebox\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-31562\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/asuschromebox-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/asuschromebox-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/asuschromebox.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2kHNF49\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Asus Chromebox2<\/a> ($170)<br \/>\n&#8220;Everyone&#8217;s probably heard of Chromebooks. They&#8217;re the little notebooks that run only Chrome, the browser. This is exactly that, but it looks kind of like a Mac mini. So you have to bring your own keyboard and mouse and screen to the game, but it&#8217;s a lot cheaper. And so you plug in your mouse, keyboard \u2014 or as what I do, I&#8217;ve got a little combo mouse-keyboard thingy \u2014 and an old display, and suddenly you&#8217;ve got a working computer that&#8217;s on the net. You can just log in with your Google account, and you&#8217;ve got a Chrome browser that just is on the net. You can watch YouTube. You can look at documentation. That&#8217;s what I use it for. I have the schematics that I&#8217;m working against or maybe some educational videos that I&#8217;m following along with. I have that next to me. And because it&#8217;s this little, tiny, cheap computer, I don&#8217;t care if it gets a little dirty from being in the workshop.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><strong>Also mentioned:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/blink1-300x128.jpg\" alt=\"blink(1)\" width=\"300\" height=\"128\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-31563\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/blink1-300x128.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/blink1-1024x438.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2018\/05\/blink1.jpg 1170w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/blink1.thingm.com\/\">blink(1)<\/a><br \/>\nIt\u2019s a non-obtrusive notification light.  You can hook it up to events on the Net you care about (\u201cnew mail\u201d, \u201cserver down\u201d, \u201cit\u2019s going to rain\u201d).<\/p>\n<p><em>We have hired professional editors to help create our weekly podcasts and video reviews. So far, Cool Tools listeners have pledged $342 a month. Please consider\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/cooltools\">supporting us<\/a>\u00a0on Patreon. We have great rewards for people who contribute! \u2013 MF<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cool Tools Show 125: Tod E. Kurt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1559],"tags":[1555,1472],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31569,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31561\/revisions\/31569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}