About Us

About TinyCircuits

TinyCircuits is an Open Source Hardware company specializing in designing and manufacturing very small (Tiny) electronics. Based out of Akron, OH, TinyCircuits was originally started in 2011 by Ken Burns as AkroSense, with the intent to develop cheap, smart (very easy to use) and tiny sensors. During development of the intial sensor prototypes, we realized the need for a host processor platform to use – and the Arduino was the perfect fit. After showing off the prototypes to our friends, we began to shift our focus to building out the TinyDuino platform first, offering a core set of building blocks for makers to use to build cool stuff.

All of our products are built in Ohio, and we hope to grow the company and help to add good quality jobs to our local community here in Akron.

As an open-source hardware company, we fully embrace the community and welcome your input on what we are doing, how we are doing it, and how we can help make the community better. Our initial set of products are built upon the hard work of the Ardunio team, we look to enhance this and branch it out into new areas. And we fully expect (and encourage) others to build upon our work as well.

About Ken

Ken is a lifelong electronics and computer geek, growing up coding on a C64 (which is still in my basement, BTW), playing with Legos, and breaking stuff to figure out how it worked. Ken then went on to become an engineer in order to figure out how to put the stuff he broke back together again. A graduate of the University of Akron, Ken has an MSEE and a BSEE with a minor in CS, and did many a geeky thing during college, like building a Mame machine and automating an etch-a-sketch (which is actually not as easy as it sounds, you really need to close the control loop – see my master’s thesis for more details). Ken is a member of the Akron Digital Group and one of the first members of SYN/HAK – the Akron Hackerspace (if you’re in Northeast Ohio area, please check us out!).

For the past 15 years, Ken has specialized in embedded system product design, developing 25+ products, including Linux & WinCE based PDAs and Tablets, Industrial PLCs, Robotic Golf carts (this was a cool one!), ATM machines, household air and water cleaners, among other things. Ken also served as a representative on the WirelessHART Working Group for over five years, to create the WirelessHART wireless mesh network standard (uses 802.15.4 like Zigbee, but focused on very high reliability and low power).

Ken lives in Akron, OH with his wife Katrina and their three cats. In his spare time, Ken works on their constantly breaking 80 year old house, spends time cooking and hiking – usually in the CVNP.