Charles Sisson

Background

About Charles Sisson

During my high school years I had the fortune to be in one which was the central computing centre for the education department. There I learned early how to computer program in COBOL, and FORTRAN. So when I went on to University, I was one up on a number of students and it helped me to be easily placed during my work terms. After graduating, I happened upon my job at Lighting Sceinces Canada (LSC) through a friend that was moving on from there for personal reasons, and so I found myself in the special field of Photometrics. During my near 25 years with LSC, I have not just operated the main data acquisition machine (the rotating mirror gonio-photometer) but I have learned a myrad of things related to the visual optic field, including operation, construction, programming, and analysis of the data from a Spectrometer. I've had to write programs in Quick BASIC, Visual Basic 6.0, and Visual C++ 6.0 to analyze data and to maintain developed software for special projects, including Optimal-Arc a basketball shot machine vision system designed to analyze the trajectory of a basketball shot and compare it the the optimal path of least energy. I've also familiarized my self with IESNA (Illuminating Engineering Society of North America) practices and standards, including the newest ones covering LED technology (LM-79-2008 and LM-80-2008). I've used AutoCAD the make machine part drawings, descriptive drawings of the luminaires I have tested for reports, and with In-house software, analysis and design of reflective and refractive optical systems for luminaire design. As part of my duties to prepare reports, Ive used Microsoft WORD and Excel, and have had to write Macros and UI's in VBA. Software has advanced faster than the data acquisition equipmewnt, so as part of the data analysis. I've had to write kludging software to transform data from one format to another for compatibility. It has been an interesting and varied experience.