About me

 

I am an expert in cartography and photogrammetry. My experience of over 40 years covers a large part of the geomatics activity sectors. For the past few years, I have been working more specifically with photogrammetry systems, which naturally led me to become interested in multicopter type drones and other non-traditional methods of acquiring georeferenced imagery. I designed, built and sold an hexacopter for a few years and I provided training on the safe use and piloting of this UAV to my customers. Today, I have an advanced pilot permit from Transport Canada, with an "evaluator" annotation.

 

Curious and scientific by nature, I am also interested since a long time in photography as a hobby, I followed and participated in all the stages of the transition from film photography to digital. In the early 2000s, I worked for too short a period with Kodak in its Earth imagery project in its then Kodak Global Imaging subsidiary. Kodak not having enough vision or conviction, it exhausted its resources rapidly, closed the division after 18 months of operation. History knows now that Google was the one who took over afterwards.

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Electronics amateur in my spare time, handyman or programmer at others, I like to develop systems to meet specific needs. As part of the TopoPix project, I developed a complete flight planning and navigation system intended to assist an aircraft pilot in accurately following tightly laid flight lines. I had to integrate an embedded computer with a Linux operating system, develop a dedicated OLED display system, design and build a color LED strip to guide the pilot, and finally enable wireless camera triggering. It gives an idea of ​​the technical achievements that are within my reach when I put the time into it.

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My latest project is something I would like to leave as a career accomplishment: I plan to set up a community network of permanent GPS reference stations. Community meaning FREE OF CHARGE! If like me you are tired of paying thousands of dollars per year and per receiver to get centimetric GPS positioning and are interested in collaborating, please take a look at this White Book on Québec's geodetic reference and do not hesitate to contact me.