Who I am

“Complex systems fail at sea. Simple ones survive.” My name is François. I live, sail and work in Brittany, France.

François

My background is rooted in the reality of the maritime industry. I spent a decade offshore, moving from hands-on roles like engine repair and maritime works to holding command positions.

Commanding a vessel taught me that a system failure isn’t just a technical bug—it is an operational risk. Software built for stable, climate-controlled environments often lacks the resilience needed when power cycles or connectivity drops in heavy weather.

Today, I run a technical testbed to develop and stress-test Linux-based systems for the maritime sector. While I repair and maintain hardware, I do not specialize in hardware design; my focus is on ensuring the software layer is predictable and resilient when conditions turn hostile.

What I’m Building

  • Low-Level Bring-up

    Working with U-Boot and bootloaders to ensure secure, fast, and reliable boot sequences. When a system loses power mid-write, it should boot—not brick. I focus on read-only filesystems that survive sudden power loss.

  • Custom Distributions

    Using Yocto Project and Buildroot to create minimal, immutable Linux images. No bloat, no unnecessary background processes—just the bare essentials for 24/7 uptime.

  • NMEA 2000 Data Pipelines

    Developing a private testbed for N2K parsing and Signal K integration. I focus on data integrity: ensuring the OS handles noisy or interrupted sensor data without crashing.

  • Production Hardening

    Implementing systemd watchdog orchestration and fail-safe OTA update strategies designed for narrow-bandwidth or offline environments.

Technical Stack

  • Boot & Build: U-Boot, Yocto Project, Buildroot
  • Data & Protocols: NMEA 2000 (CAN bus), NMEA 0183, Signal K, MQTT
  • OS Engineering: Kernel hardening, systemd, Read-only FS, Python, C, Rust
  • Philosophy: Simplicity survives. If it’s not essential, it’s a liability.

The Technical Logbook

This site documents my R&D process. I share the practical configurations and edge cases I’ve encountered while adapting Linux for maritime environments.

  • Deep dives into U-Boot and hardware initialization.
  • Yocto recipes for maritime-specific layers (kernel optimizations, drivers).
  • NMEA 2000 bus diagnostics from a software perspective.
  • Fail-safe strategies for remote systems (watchdogs, recovery partitions).

Building for the maritime sector? If you’re dealing with specific embedded Linux constraints, I’m open to discussing technical collaborations.

Contact me