I build things that have to work where nobody can reach them: collars on cattle in the open field, power boxes in Togolese villages, radio inside concrete.
Profile
A decade of embedded software, two turns as CTO of IoT companies, and a year bringing radio coverage inside buildings. I take technical projects from scope and planning through suppliers to delivery, and own the whole thing: hardware, firmware, platform and the people around it. AI tools do the mechanical work, so the judgement goes where it matters.
Project follow-up of distributed antenna systems bringing ASTRID (TETRA) and cellular coverage into buildings.
Priced private tenders and frame agreements with hundreds of cost items using simulation tools.
Wrote public tender applications for SEVESO sites; worked with industrial customers on business plans, risk assessments and project plans.
Built a Claude agent that reads requests and building plans and semi-automates antenna plans and quotes. It caught specification inconsistencies an experienced reviewer had missed.
Chief Technology OfficerOct 2020 – May 2025
Herd-itt · Co-founder · Self-employed · Global
Led electronics, mechanical design, firmware, AI and the SaaS platform for LoRa cattle-monitoring collars, with heat detection as the key feature.
Wrote the firmware and feature extraction; the backend classifies behaviour per cow over time and across the herd.
Managed an international network of specialist freelancers on a fixed budget; replaced the in-house platform with OpenRemote.
Steering committee member of the H2020 ClearFarm project (grant 862919). Raised a business angel round; built a holding with local distributors; the concept was sold.
Chief Technology OfficerSep 2021 – Jun 2023
SOLERGIE · Freelance · Bruges
Solar nano-grids in Togo, sold as electricity that pays off a lease. Led the move from SMS telemetry to an NB-IoT communication module built on the Herd-itt tracker hardware.
Coordinated employees and volunteers without formal authority; introduced Quantum Leaps QP state machines so a volunteer could write the firmware.
After the Belgian entity closed, kept supporting the team in Togo.
Verhaert Masters in Innovation · Freelance · Kruibeke
Safety-critical video over 4G on screen within 300 ms: GStreamer, hardware decoding, OpenGL shaders.
Medical device on BLE 4.0 and 6LoWPAN, from compliance documentation to sensor implementation.
CI/CD for embedded firmware (Yocto, SWUpdate, Eclipse hawkBit); mentored two junior engineers to independence.
Embedded Software EngineerJul 2018 – Sep 2019
Barco · Freelance · Kortrijk
ClickShare team: brought up a new hardware platform on Buildroot, integrated custom drivers and configured GRUB for secure boot.
C++ interfaces between the operating system and the Qt application; audio and video streaming drivers for STM32 on ThreadX.
Embedded Software EngineerJul 2017 – Jun 2018
FN Herstal · Freelance · Herstal
Linux bring-up on new hardware with Yocto: kernel drivers, OpenGL ported between GPUs, low-latency video with hardware encoding.
Yocto distribution for a hardware simulator, with CI/CD and full-OS updates.
R&D EngineerFeb 2014 – Jun 2017
dotOcean · Full-time · Bruges
From prototype to production: data loggers for wind farms, deep-sea sensors, dredging automation, gas-detection networks, autonomous surface vessels.
Hands-on offshore work deploying and supporting electronics in the field.
Embedded Linux ConsultantOct 2011 – Feb 2014
Altran Belgium & Luxembourg · Full-time · Ghent
Firmware for an anaesthetic device; USB device management and Miracast streaming for TP Vision televisions; a video door station for Niko Home Control.
How I work
The core comes firstHours go to the idea that makes the product work; everything else goes to a partner, early.
Decide on what cannot be undoneBudget goes where mistakes are permanent; reversible calls are made fast.
The slowest part sets the calendarHardware, firmware and platform land together, planned from the slowest part.
Measure what paysSuccess is the value delivered, proven with field data, not the features shipped.
Align the agendasA solution only holds when every party at the table can live with it.
AI does the mechanical workAgents read the tenders, plans and price lists; the judgement stays human.
“At Herd-itt, Peter successfully oversaw the entire product chain from mechanical design and embedded electronics to cloud-based software demonstrating true end-to-end ownership. No challenge is too complex for him to manage effectively.”
Stories behind these roles, and full recommendations, on www.curtat.be/stories.