Datum Labs · About
I'm Thomas Allen. I build embedded products end to end.
Founder of Datum Laboratories — a one-person shop where the person who talks to you is the one who designs the board, writes the firmware, and builds the software around it. I like taking an idea all the way to a working, reliable, manufacturable thing. Setpoint is one I took the whole way.
The short version: I ship.
Plenty of people can list "ESP32" and "Python" on a page. Fewer can point to a product they designed, built, and put in customers' hands — hardware, firmware, and software, all of it. Setpoint is a no-cloud Wi-Fi temperature logger I took from concept to a shipping DIY kit: I designed the ESP32-C3 hardware and carrier, wrote the firmware (offline buffering, deep-sleep battery modes, browser-based flashing), built the self-hosted dashboard and REST/MQTT/Prometheus back end, and wrote the documentation so a buyer is never locked in.
Then I field-tested it — because a spec sheet isn't proof. One unit logged 160,916 readings over 46 continuous hours on a single charge with zero dropouts, and the write-up is honest about exactly what that does and doesn't establish. That's how I work: build it, test it, and tell you the truth about the result.
How I work
Practical, tested, and honest about the trade-offs.
Not a big firm and not trying to be. The advantage of working with me is that you work directly with the engineer building the thing.
Learn by building
I get to a working prototype fast, then let real behavior — not assumptions — drive the design.
Practical over clever
The simplest design that's reliable beats the impressive one that isn't. I optimize for something you can actually run and maintain.
Design for the real world
Manufacturability, battery life, weak Wi-Fi, field recovery — I design for the messy conditions, not just the bench.
Test, then tell the truth
I measure what I build and I'm straight about what the data shows. No overselling — you get an accurate picture.
Document and hand off
You get the files, the code, and the notes. No black boxes, no vendor lock-in, nothing that dies if I disappear.
Combine disciplines
Hardware, firmware, software, and mechanical in one head means fewer hand-off gaps and a system that actually fits together.
Selected work
A few things I've built.
Told as problem → what I built → outcome, because that's what actually shows capability.
Setpoint
Shipping nowThe problem: Off-the-shelf temperature loggers are cloud-locked, subscription-bound, or too dumb to trust with a freezer full of food or a server rack.
What I built: A self-contained Wi-Fi probe on an ESP32-C3 + DS18B20 — custom carrier board, low-power firmware with an on-device offline buffer and deep-sleep modes, a browser flasher (no toolchain), and a self-hosted Python dashboard with alerts, CSV/Excel export, and MQTT/Prometheus/Home-Assistant integrations. No cloud, no account.
Outcome: Shipping as a DIY kit on Tindie with a small-batch Rev-2 in production, and field-tested over multi-day runs. See Setpoint →
Wearable vision system
Uncommon buildThe goal: A head-mounted, real-time camera-vision headset with night vision — the kind of integration very few people have actually built end to end.
What I built: An NVIDIA Jetson embedded-Linux pipeline driving live camera vision to a head-mounted display — low-light/night-vision imaging, real-time video, power management for a wearable, and custom + 3D-printed mechanical housing to carry it all.
Outcome: A working, self-contained rig that pulls embedded Linux, optics, real-time vision, power, and mechanical design into one wearable. Code on GitHub →
AI inventory & OCR system
Runs offlineThe problem: Cataloging items by hand is slow and error-prone, and most "AI" tools want to send your data to someone else's cloud.
What I built: A local-AI pipeline — OCR and vision models running on hardware you own — that reads, extracts, and organizes items automatically, with the automation glue to make it a hands-off workflow. Nothing leaves the machine.
Outcome: A tedious manual task turned into an automated, private pipeline — the same "keep it local, keep it yours" philosophy behind Setpoint.
Also in the mix: ESP32 firmware and sensor work, small networking and automation utilities, test fixtures, and open-source code on GitHub.
What I work across
Hardware to software, in one place.
Broad by design — the projects above are where these actually get used, which is the part that matters.
ESP32 · embedded C/C++ · Arduino · sensor integration & data logging · KiCad PCB design, schematic capture, prototyping, soldering & hardware bring-up.
Python · Linux · Bash · web interfaces & dashboards · REST APIs · networking (Wi-Fi / MQTT / Prometheus) · self-hosted data pipelines.
Local LLMs · OCR pipelines · vision models & image processing · edge inference on NVIDIA Jetson · automation workflows — kept on-device.
3D printing (two-printer setup) · functional CAD · enclosure & mount design · product prototyping and short runs.
Background
Where the habits come from.
R&D and product testing gave me the working habits I still build with: methodical evaluation, careful data collection and analysis, systematic troubleshooting, and documentation that lets the next person pick up where you left off. That discipline — measure it, write it down, improve it — is exactly what I bring to a build now.
Have something you want built?
Whether it's a new product, an existing design that needs improving, or a hard engineering problem — tell me about it and I'll tell you honestly whether and how I can help.