Residence Bangkok, Thailand Nationality Finnish | Name Jani Hirvinen | |
Born November 25, 1969 (age 54) ( 1969-11-25 ) Helsinki, Finland Other names Jani-Petri Kalervo Hirvinen Occupation CEO, jnMechanics, TH, Sky Kingdom Technology, HK Known for Entrepreneurship, Drones, Networks, Aviation, Electronics, ArduCopter | ||
Jani Hirvinen (born 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is one of the earlier Finnish IT-technology pioneers. He started his IT career on early 1980s by doing FIDONet and SiGNET BBS networks.
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Youth
Hirvinen was born to a family of aviation as his father was a long term aviator and also flight instructor in Finland. Throughout he has been keen on aviation and the technologies behind it. In his early age he was able to access on new technologies around the world due the connections of his parents. He was starting electronics at the age of 4 years and computers at age of 8 years.
1980s
Hirvinen received his first Sinclair ZX80 on 1980 just few weeks after it was released in the UK. The next year Hirvinen started to work with new released Sinclair ZX81 and became a member of the international Sinclair Club.
After graduating from High School Hirvinen became one of the youngest and earliest persons in Finland to get in touch with SMD technologies and also a programmer for SMD Assembly machine. He started to work with Universal Omni-place 4621A machines at a company called Point Production Ltd in Hyvinkää, Finland. One highlight of his early "SMD era" was to introduce SMD technologies and being responsible of creating first SMD assemblies for the Finnish Army at 1987.
1990s
Hirvinen started his first ISP on 1994 called as SGIC Communications Oy in Tampere, Finland. Two year later they acquired a majority from VIP Tietoverkot Oy and changed the corporation's name to VIP Networks Oy. During the early dates of the known internet age, he has one of the first ones to create web sites and web hosting systems in Finland.
Pioneering on Drones
In 2009 Hirvinen started to work again on electronics development and aviation industry. From AeroQuad project and created ArduCopter team. He became a leader of ArduCopter development team and created first ArduCopter that is now base system for the worlds No.1 multicopter platform. In late 2010 Hirvinen released that hit markets really hard and introduced many new techniques that are now in use on most multicopter airframes. Soon after the initial release of ArduCopter, jDrones and 3DRobotics companies was created to serve ever growing need of creating personal drones for the masses.