François Gervais

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I'm an embedded firmware developer with interest in communication protocols, computer security, machine learning and basic hardware development.

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Open Source

As part of my professional and personal time I use and produce different open source projects which can be found here:

Personal Projects

Date Project Description
May 2024 TMP117 Temperature Sensor Adapter
Mar 2024 E-Paper Message Toggle Display
Aug 2023 Air Quality Station for Home Assistant
May 2023 Single Side Protoboard
May 2023 Air Conditioning Adapter for Home Assistant
Apr 2023 Wireless button for Home Assistant - Rev2
Mar 2023 Leak Detector - Rev3
Dec 2022 Mute Yourself
Dec 2022 ISM330DHCX STEMMA QT
Oct 2022 MS88SF3 (nRF52840) Feather
8 May 2022 Spectral color sensor STEMMA QT
24 Apr 2022 Wireless button for Home Assistant
28 Dec 2021 Cold beer through hacking
4 Oct 2021 I²C to 1-Wire® STEMMA QT Adapter
3 Jul 2021 Stemma QT EEPROM Adapter

Featured at:
Adafruit
OSH Park
18 May 2021 RGB LED Controller
15 Mar 2021 Adafruit 3309 JST SH Adapter
31 Jan 2021 Adafruit 3309 JST ZH Adapter
6 Apr 2021 My take on an ESP32 module
30 Jan 2021 Dispense the perfect amount of detergent
10 Nov 2020 Detect leaks and report through an alarm and a phone notification

Professional experience

Distech Controls Inc.

Distech is a company that specialises in making HVAC products.

As part of my daily work, I got to work on a couple Linux and Android based products, Apex, Eclypse and Horyzon-C.

On these products, I’ve been involved in quite a few things including:

FIPS 140-2

Distech Eclypse line of products FIPS 140-2 certification: 3106, 3046

Noteworthy Patches

Errata

Patents (Updated July 31, 2024)

Granted

US12020445B2 - Method and computing device using a neural network to localize an overlap between two thermal images respectively generated by two infrared sensors [2024-06-25]

US20220261592A1 - Computing device and method using a neural network to determine whether or not to process images of an image flow [2024-02-06]

US20210064968A1 - Training server and method for generating a predictive model of a neural network through distributed reinforcement learning [2024-01-02]

US11510097B2 - Environment control device and method for inferring an optimal wireless data transfer rate using a neural network [2022-11-22]

US20200158369A1 - Computing device and method for inferring an airflow of a vav appliance operating in an area of a building [2022-08-30]

US20200356385A1 - Computing device providing fail-safe execution of a service [2022-07-05]

US20200356302A1 - Method providing resilient execution of a service on a computing device [2022-06-14]

US11277347B2 - Inference server and environment control device for inferring an optimal wireless data transfer rate [2022-03-15]

US11188832B2,US20190354877A1 - Method and environment controller for validating a predictive model of a neural network through interactions with the environment controller [2021-11-30]

US20200200423A1 - Computing device and method for inferring via a neural network a two-dimensional temperature mapping of an area [2021-08-03]

US11041644B2,US20190353366A1 - Method and environment controller using a neural network for bypassing a legacy environment control software module [2021-06-22]

US20190156195A1 - Computing device and method for inferring a predicted number of data chunks writable on a flash memory before wear out [2021-06-15]

US10956048B2,US20190155520A1 - Computing device and method for inferring a predicted number of physical blocks erased from a flash memory [2021-03-23]

US20190182069A1 - Environment controller and method for inferring one or more commands for controlling an appliance taking into account room characteristics [2021-02-02]

US20190179270A1 - Inference server and environment controller for inferring one or more commands for controlling an appliance taking into account room characteristics [2021-01-19]

US20190179269A1 - Environment controller and method for inferring via a neural network one or more commands for controlling an appliance [2020-11-24]

US20190179268A1 - Inference server and environment controller for inferring via a neural network one or more commands for controlling an appliance [2020-11-17]

US20170071015A1 - Environment control device providing a wi-fi hotspot for accessing the internet [2018-09-04]

US9838959B2 - Environment control device (ecd) and method for configuring the ecd to operate a wi-fi communication interface [2017-12-05]

Pending

US20220022084A1 - Computing device and method using a neural network to infer a predicted state of a communication channel [filed: 2021-09-30]

US20220222535A1 - Computing device and method using a neural network to analyze temperature measurements of an infrared sensor [filed: 2021-01-08]

US20220188640A1 - Computing device and method using a neural network to bypass calibration data of an infrared sensor [filed: 2020-12-11]

US20190278242A1 - Training server and method for generating a predictive model for controlling an appliance [filed: 2018-03-07]

US20190310589A1 - Neural network combining visible and thermal images for inferring environmental data of an area of a building [filed: 2018-04-06]

Abandoned

US20210034967A1 - Environment controller and methods for validating an estimated number of persons present in an area [filed: 2019-11-27]

US20210116142A1 - Thermostat and method using a neural network to adjust temperature measurements [filed: 2019-10-22]

US20200400333A1 - Environment controller and method for predicting temperature variations based on sound level measurements [filed: 2019-06-19]

US20200401092A1 - Environment controller and method for predicting co2 level variations based on sound level measurements [filed: 2019-06-19]

US20200184329A1 - Environment controller and method for improving predictive models used for controlling a temperature in an area [filed: 2018-12-11]

US20190379470A1 - Computing device and method using a neural network to infer a predicted state of a communication channel [filed: 2018-06-08]

Expired

US20190115082A1 - Memory device comprising flash memory and method for controlling a write speed of a bus transmitting data for storage on the flash memory [2020-03-17]

Brioconcept Consulting Inc.

As a consulting company, Brioconcept is doing a lot of different things.

During the 5 years I got to work there I worked mostly on 4 different projects.

Personal locator

This project is a watch that can be used to know the location of the person wearing it.

It can be used by older or younger people that have a tendency to get lost.

All these watches connect to a server where the whole pool is managed through a web interface. On that interface you can see the location of the watch but also get access to fancy features like get an alert if the watch get in or out of a defined perimeter or if the watch get beyond a configured velocity.

On this project I was in charge on the back-end where the watches would connect and the front-end where the administrator would manage a pool of watches or the user would control his watch.

Patents

US10453327B2 - Apparatus and methods for geolocating an individual with respect to a perimeter [2019-10-22]

Kontron Canada Inc.

At Brioconcept we did mostly in-house projects for others but sometimes we also sent engineers for help in other companies.

That’s what happened to me when I got to go work at Kontron.

Basically they made a server motherboard for storage server company which was running what we refered to as the legacy BIOS i.e. the old style, assembly written one.

Motherboard

At that time the market was slowly moving to the new UEFI BIOS and so they needed help for the port.

This project got big really quickly and I ended up working on that project for about 1 year and a half.

I got to do:

I also did on site support for this product at the end customer site at IBM XIV Storage System in Israel.

Animal feeding device

This project was an inteligent feeding device for animal. The client wanted it to run Android as the base firmware so he could just hire “of the shelf” app developper as the device application.

On this project I ported Android to the embedded platform.

Distech Controls Inc.

Before working at Distech as an employe, I worked there as a consultant.

I first got involved because they wanted to run Android on their new project and I had experience doing so.

I ended up working there for about 2 years as a consultant before moving as a full time employe.