Tod Kurt
Special guest
Tod Kurt is co-founder of ThingM, a ubiquitous computing device studio based in Pasadena and San Francisco. He is creator of the popular blink(1) USB notificiation light and BlinkM, the Smart LED prototyping device for Arduino. Tod is a contributor to MAKE magazine, author of the book "Hacking Roomba", active member in the Arduino & CircuitPython communities, and co-founder of the Los Angeles hackerspace Crash Space. His past professions includes systems architect for GoTo.com, the first pay-per-click search engine, and a ML researcher at Yahoo Research Labs. Before that, Tod was a hardware and firmware engineer working on robotic camera systems for probes that went to Mars.
Tod Kurt has been a guest on 1 episode.
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Episode 156: When Code Leaves the Screen
May 23rd, 2026 | 56 mins 2 secs
In this episode of Teaching Python, Kelly Schuster-Paredes and Julian Sequeira talk with engineer and maker Todd Kurt about physical computing and what happens when code moves from the screen to hardware. The conversation focuses on CircuitPython and MicroPython, including how they differ in design, teaching focus, and tradeoffs.
Todd describes his background in engineering, web development, and open source hardware, and the group discusses practical classroom challenges such as bootloaders, UF2 files, board compatibility, libraries, and wiring mistakes. Kelly and Julian also share examples from their classrooms, where students use boards, sensors, NeoPixels, and other devices to build tangible projects and develop troubleshooting skills.