Dirk “Dirco” du Toit

Modern web platform (“MSR Connect” / “MSR Solo”) for slope-stability monitoring radar, replacing a legacy desktop application with a client/server implementation that consolidates multiple radar systems into a unified operational environment with interactive 3D terrain, scan visualisations, alarms and analytical trends.

• Led the frontend and 3D architectural direction for the transition from a legacy desktop HMI to a high-performance, cross-platform client/server web platform.
• Architected a multi-pass WebGL/GLSL shader pipeline that projects radar-scan data directly onto 3D digital terrain models (DTMs) to bypass the memory and performance bottlenecks of legacy geometry-only approaches and unlock simultaneous multi-radar visualisation in a seamless 360° environment.
• Engineered custom GLSL shader stages covering coordinate transformation, dynamic colour ramps, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) smoothing, real-time line-of-sight/shadow calculations and contour/grid overlays.
• Built interactive 3D spatial tools for local georeferencing and monitoring-region vector drawing, tightly synchronising viewport interactions with hierarchical tree views, time-series charts and temporal playback controls.
• Implemented Web Workers and WebSocket streaming to move CPU-heavy processing off the main thread and stream live radar-scan imagery while keeping the browser UI fluid and responsive.
• Integrated third-party geotechnical sensors (such as prisms and extensometers) into unified 3D spatial views and correlated trend charts, enabling direct comparison of multi-source displacement data.
• Evaluated performance and algorithmic trade-offs through Python/Jupyter prototypes, conducting GPU-oriented, bulk NumPy and columnar-data (Parquet/Arrow) experiments to de-risk production graphics and data pipelines.
• Implemented full internationalisation support, including right-to-left (RTL) locales.

Cross-platform desktop application (“Deployment Helper”) designed and developed from scratch to streamline 3D terrain preparation, coordinate transformation and real-time radar coverage simulation supporting all MSR models.

• Evolved the application from a dedicated 3D mesh converter into a comprehensive interactive deployment and coverage-planning tool.
• Built reliable mesh processing pipelines (PyMeshLab, Open3D) to preview, repair, decimate and convert DTMs, scans and point clouds—solving persistent interoperability gaps where existing third-party tools produced incompatible exports, lacked full format support or could not simplify texture-mapped meshes.
• Implemented coordinate scaling, georeferencing and axis transformations to reconcile disparate mine survey grids, CAD conventions and radar-local coordinate systems.
• Developed a two-pass WebGL/GLSL GPU shader pipeline to compute line-of-sight terrain visibility and surface incidence angles, enabling real-time coverage simulation across candidate radar positions.

Field and desktop software for a compact FMCW ground-penetrating radar, combining real-time data acquisition with subsurface signal processing, interactive 2D radargram visualisation and geotechnical analysis.

• Independently developed the production HMI for rugged ARM tablets (field acquisition) and desktop systems (detailed analysis).
• Built interactive 2D radargram visualisations with custom display controls, feature tracking and diagnostic analysis workflows.
• Integrated a comprehensive signal-processing pipeline covering real-time filtering, time-to-distance conversion, FFT processing, adaptive contrast enhancement and super-resolution.
• Ported the complete numerical pipeline from MATLAB into Python (NumPy/SciPy/OpenCV) to eliminate proprietary runtime licensing and simplify deployment.
• Prototyped browser-based FFT and GPGPU processing using TensorFlow.js and custom WebGL/GLSL shaders to explore lightweight cross-platform architectures.

A family of distributed monitoring and diagnostic applications supporting a global fleet of radar systems. The software collected operational telemetry, interpreted large volumes of log data and provided centralised health monitoring and detailed investigation tools for technical support.

• Architected a distributed telemetry platform that collected log deltas from globally deployed radar systems and parsed large volumes of unstructured, hard-to-interpret log data into structured operational events.
• Built centralised monitoring dashboards with real-time status aggregation across radars and subsystems, providing drill-down views, filtering and visual health indicators for technical support.
• Developed a standalone forensic analysis application capable of parsing months of radar logs directly into memory, with custom zoomable event timelines, interactive charts and detailed contextual drill-down.
• Designed recovery and continuation mechanisms across application and virtual-machine failures, and partitioned historical records into archive tables to preserve the responsiveness of live operational queries.
• Delivered email alerting and automated log retrieval (FTP/SMTP) to close the loop between detection and operator response.

Production HMI for open-pit slope-stability monitoring radar, covering hardware configuration and control, area-of-interest drawing, live and historical trend analysis, 3D scan visualisation, 3D terrain models, georeferencing, alarms and reporting.

• Built and maintained OpenGL 3D graphics pipelines for real-time radar-scan overlays, digital terrain model (DTM) rendering and georeferenced spatial views.
• Engineered multi-sensor fusion features, combining prism and geotechnical sensor data with radar measurements to compute and visualise displacement relative to local terrain.
• Developed interactive time-series trends and spatial analysis tools, enabling geotechnical engineers to draw monitoring regions, track movement velocity and analyse historical slope behaviour.
• Implemented mission-critical alarm workflows, integrating threshold-based software alerts with serial-triggered physical sirens and external warning hardware.
• Maintained and evolved a long-lived, multi-OS production codebase (Windows/Linux via CrossKylix), ensuring continuous 24/7 operational stability in harsh mining environments.

Geospatial and floorplan visualisation module built as part of a multi-tenant SaaS platform, enabling outdoor advertising operators to explore, package and manage national billboard and venue inventory.

• Independently developed an interactive GIS module integrating Esri ArcGIS with geospatial search, points of interest, demographic data and advertising inventory.
• Implemented spatial plotting and clustering to make large, geographically distributed billboard inventories intuitive to explore and navigate.
• Developed vector and raster floorplan visualisations (zooming, panning, navigation) linked directly to underlying asset and client data.
• Built dynamic, desktop-like browser interfaces using early AJAX techniques to provide seamless controls and data views without full-page reloads.