systev

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Presentation

Do you have a project involving connected devices or a system that incorporates connected devices?

I help you putting your project on the right track, with following assistance:

  • Advice regarding use cases, types of connectivity, application-level protocols, etc.
  • Research tasks regarding the communication layer
  • Development of proofs of concept or prototypes
  • For the embedded part, design of the software architecture and complete software developpment (for bare metal and RTOS targets)

My experience encompasses the three technical fields required to design reliable products: communication systems, software development, electronics.

I hold a Master of Engineering from the French graduate engineering school IMT Atlantique, with a specialization in Computer Science followed at Telecom Paris. I hold four granted patents, and one pending, in the field of connected devices. I’m a part-time lecturer at IMT Atlantique, where I teach a 22-hour course about embedded software development.

Since the 90’s, I have designed, developed and delivered many systems, under tight resource and time constraints. Some of the projects I carried out and systems I built:

  • Adaptation of the OpenThread stack of Zephyr RTOS for a CC1352P7-based module. Identification and correction of a bug in the Zephyr driver. Improvement of the Python code used in the RCP configuration of OpenThread. Selection of the transport layer. Validation of the network configuration and of the radio coverage. Minimal integration in an embedded Linux
  • Emergency intervention on two ESP32-based projects experiencing technical difficulties. Redefinition of software architectures, related development work, testing, and documentation. Supervision of the junior developer in charge of both projects
  • Exploratory study for the definition of an energy autonomous architecture mixing Bluetooth LE and LoRaWAN, for extending the coverage of an existing Bluetooth/Wi-Fi system. Then, development of the system according to the architecture, including porting the LoRa Basic Modem stack from Semtech to an EFR32BG22
  • Architecture definition and development of a new embedded communication SDK:
    • First production-grade implementation of SCHC compression/decompression
    • First production-grade implementation of parts of the SCHC fragmentation/reassembly
    • Event-driven architecture – implementation independent of the target microcontroller and target execution environment (bare metal, RTOS, OS)
    • Development of test tooling for validation before the availability of the server platform
    • Development of unit tests and functional tests
    • Customer technical documentation
    • Integration of new versions of LoRaWAN stacks
    • Integration of MQTT
    • Identification of the origin of bugs (SDK, integrated stacks, board drivers), and corrections or workarounds
    • New functions
    • Development done for Acklio. The SDK source code is now available as FOSS thanks to the lab.SCHC
  • Architecture definition and implementation of an embedded application having to be compatible with an existing communication protocol, for an ESP32 target
  • Review of a very large project applying for public grants
  • SDK for a microcontroller board with several wireless modules and a GNSS module – bare-metal software development
  • Real-time mission dispatch for various types of fleet of vehicles (taxis, waste collection, ambulances, etc.)
  • Several versions of the on-board device used in above systems
  • Urban transport real-time tracking (information about next stop to the driver and to the travelers, alerts on delays, etc.)
  • Air quality monitoring (periodic upload of sensor data, etc.)
  • Remote control of radio transceivers (frequency settings, etc.)
  • Tracking system with global coverage (integration of two cellular networks and one satellite network, etc.)
  • Detection of presence of the driver in a car
  • Supervision of entrances and exits of sailing ships for a harbor
  • Transmission of a video stream over 4G, from a mobile device to another mobile device, triggered by an alarm
  • Etc.

Some of the technical environments that I have used:

  • Communication layers:
    • Short distance: Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, proprietary
    • Mesh: Thread
    • Cellular (GPRS, 3G, 4G)
    • LPWAN: LoRaWAN – LoRa Basic Modem and LoRaMac-Node stacks
    • Digital trunked radio (TETRA)
    • Professional mobile radio (PMR)
    • Satellite (Inmarsat-C)
    • Etc.
  • Microcontrollers / boards:
    • ST STM32L0, STM32L4
    • Espressif ESP32, ESP8266
    • Silicon Labs EFR32
    • MangOH and Sierra Wireless WPxxxx module
    • NXP LPC1115
    • NXP (originally Motorola) 68HC11
    • Etc.
  • Embedded software environments:
    • Bare-metal
    • FreeRTOS
    • ESP-IDF
    • Etc.
  • Programming languages:
    • C
    • C++
    • Assembly languages
    • Java
    • Scala
    • Kotlin
    • Go
    • Pascal
    • Python
    • JavaScript
    • TypeScript
    • Etc.
  • Desktop, server, mainframe:
    • Docker
    • VirtualBox
    • Vagrant
    • Vue.js, Angular
    • Akka
    • Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS
    • VMS
    • VM/CMS
    • Etc.

I work remotely, from Grasse (south-east of France).

Contact

To contact me: pascal dot bodin at-sign systev dot com. I run my business through the systev company.

More information

Old website

The old site contained various articles. I didn’t take the time to migrate them to the present site. They can be accessed here. The category selection in the blog section is no longer available.