Welcome to F97.BE!

Hello, I’m Erik Schmidt, a lifelong tech tinkerer, systems thinker, and builder of smarter solutions. From my base in Eynatten, Belgium, I draw on a formal education in Mathematics, Informatics, and Political Sciences, combined with over three decades of hands-on experience. Throughout my career, I have designed systems that blend elegance with efficiency, while ensuring the resilience needed in environments where failure is not an option.

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It all began on Christmas 1982, when my parents gave me a Commodore 64 and my uncle brought me a ZX Spectrum from a trade show in the UK. That Christmas sparked a lifelong fascination with technology. From there I moved on to programming machines like the Apple II and the Amiga. Later, during my university studies, I worked with more advanced systems such as the PDP-11. Programming in Assembler, Fortran, and Pascal was more than technical training, it was a masterclass in discipline and precision. Every byte counted, every clock cycle mattered, and nothing could be taken for granted. Those early lessons in structure and efficiency still guide how I build modern systems, and to this day I remain more of a Unix user than a Windows guy.

In 1989, while studying in Aachen, Germany, I helped build the German FidoNet. In a world still running on dial-up and DOS, we engineered a decentralized network where messages moved from node to node, an early experiment in resilience and distribution long before those concepts became mainstream. Around the same time I was also involved in Yuppie!, where I contributed as a writer of technical documentation. That experience taught me that technology is not only hardware and code, it is also community, coordination, and connection.

For more than thirty years in IT, I have worked on systems where reliability is paramount, including critical infrastructure and intelligent automation, environments where a single fault can cascade into real-world consequences. One of my most meaningful collaborations was with my late business partner, Dr. Rein Scheele. Together we developed the AT Mobimeter (Abstract) for the Dutch Government, a usage-based vehicle taxation system that anticipated today’s debates about mobility, fairness, and sustainability. A change in government meant the system was never implemented, a missed opportunity, as many of the questions we addressed then have since returned.

I specialize in creating custom hardware for mission-critical environments, where reliability and innovation must go hand in hand. Early in my career, I designed the first generation of portable computers for the ABC measurement containers of Germany’s former Federal Office for Civil Protection, and later the first generation of signage computers for Munich Airport, powering the plasma displays used there at the time. These projects taught me that in demanding environments, failure is not an abstract risk but a concrete outcome. So when I say that reliability matters, I speak from experience.

Alongside technical development, I have worked extensively in sales and business-facing roles. This has given me a dual perspective, understanding both organizational constraints and engineering realities. It allows me to translate business goals and agile processes into robust technical systems, bridging the gap between strategy and implementation without losing either side along the way.

Today my work spans two domains. I guide employees of an English company through the complexities of a custom ERP system, helping them turn process into productivity. In parallel, I am developing NeuralWeave AI, my own AI image indexer and visual search engine, built for professionals who value privacy, performance, and control. Both roles reflect what I do best, making complex technology understandable, practical, and dependable.

In addition, I design and build systems that make everyday life smarter and more sustainable, from solar forecasting to intelligent EV charging and home automation. My ground breaking Fusion Forecast sits at the center of this work, blending physical energy models with machine learning to achieve accuracy and resilience that neither approach delivers on its own. What matters to me is not technology for its own sake, but how it serves people, turning data into clarity and systems into something that quietly works.

AI is now at the heart of this approach. I design and train models that predict solar yields, optimize EV charging, and guide automation decisions in real time. These are deployed systems that run on local infrastructure, often on small edge devices where speed, transparency, and reliability matter most.

Within Fusion Forecast, I combine physical irradiance baselines with adaptive learning models such as Random Forest Regressors and Gradient Boosting Machines, calibrated against years of production and weather data. Together they form an ensemble that continuously learns, adjusts, and improves with each new data point.

My NeuralWeave project explores another dimension of AI, visual understanding. It uses SigLIP and CLIP like vision transformers to generate embeddings that power similarity search, clustering, and semantic tagging across large image collections. The result is a private, on premise search engine that understands images visually without sending a single byte to the cloud.

This shift toward adaptive, learning systems has fundamentally changed how I build software. Instead of rigid instructions, I now design strategies that recognize patterns, handle uncertainty, and improve over time. For me, AI is not a black box but a collaborator, a partner in building technology that is practical, transparent, and ready for the future.

Technology continues to evolve, and so do I. Curiosity drives me to keep learning, keep building, and keep turning ideas into systems that not only work today but help shape what comes next.

I am also the author of two books that explore the intersection of technical systems, policy, and societal impact. You can find both books and more details on my books page: https://f97.be/buecher/. These books grow directly out of my work on real systems, where technical choices meet political and societal consequences.

In short: I am not just fluent in these technologies, I master them to build end-to-end systems that work in the real world. From training AI models to wiring relays, from teaching ERP workflows to deploying containerized APIs, I deliver solutions that are practical, intelligent, and dependable.

Over the years I’ve also taken on the role of a Technology Evangelist, sharing ideas, inspiring others, and showing how smarter systems can make a real difference. Whether it’s guiding a team through AI adoption, helping businesses translate processes into software, or demonstrating what’s possible with renewable energy and open-source tools, I enjoy being the bridge between innovation and people. Technology is not just about code, it’s about vision, communication, and getting others excited to build the future together.

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On a personal note, I live in a solar-powered home with my artist wife and our daughter. Together, we support local energy cooperatives and Ecolo, Belgium’s green party, because sustainability is not just a technical challenge but a societal choice. Our solar installations and electric cars are everyday symbols of that commitment.

Beyond technology, I collect vintage postcards and rare books. They preserve stories of forgotten places and people, balancing the intensity of my technical work with moments of stillness. For me, history, like code, is full of hidden patterns waiting to be uncovered.