Nick Whitelegg
Senior Lecturer, Web Development at Southampton Solent University
Greater Southampton Area United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNick Whitelegg is a Senior Lecturer in Web Development with 21 years' experience teaching PHP, JavaScript, Java, Kotlin and Android while leading applied research in open-source mapping and AR for outdoor use. Based in the Greater Southampton area, he combines academic rigor (PhD in Computational Biochemistry) with strong hands-on engineering—contributing core C++ plugins to Mapnik and adding location-based AR features to the widely used AR.js project. He builds free, practical tools like Hikar, an AR Android app that overlays OSM footpaths and virtual signposts, and OpenTrailView 360, an early-stage StreetView-like pano viewer for trails. His work sits at the intersection of geospatial data, immersive UX and mobile development, and much of it is published as FOSS across GitLab and GitHub. Notably, he has implemented GPS-projected camera components that bridge live GPS data with AR visualisations for outdoor navigation.
21 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (MSc), Pharmacology, Master of Science (MSc), Pharmacology at University of SouthamptonDoctor of Philosophy (PhD), Computational Biochemistry, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Computational Biochemistry at University of Bath
Github Skills (14)
aframe10
mappings10
libxml210
javascript10
c-language10
mapnik10
gis10
cprogramming-language10
cartography10
augmented-reality10
geolocation10
xml-parsing9
threejs9
web-development8
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
AR-js-org/AR.js
Mar 2020 - Jan 2023
Image tracking, Location Based AR, Marker tracking. All on the Web.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Front-end Developer
Back-end Developer & Front-end DeveloperContributions:6 reviews, 145 commits, 56 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Nick made significant contributions to the `ar-js-org/ar.js` repository, focusing on location-based augmented reality features. They implemented and updated the `gps-projected-camera` and `gps-camera` components, which project and update user position relative to their GPS coordinates. They also added new examples, including ones that incorporate OpenStreetMap data and download vector polyline data from an API to display geographic data.
image-trackingmarkermarker-trackingwebarthreejs
mapnik/mapnik
Mar 2008 - Feb 2009
Mapnik is an open source toolkit for developing mapping applications
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:9 commits in 11 months
Contributions summary:Nick's commits primarily involve the initial development of an OSM (OpenStreetMap) plugin for the Mapnik mapping toolkit. This includes the creation of core C++ code for the `osm_featureset` and `osm_datasource` components, which are crucial for parsing and handling OSM data. The user also integrated parsing logic for the OSM data using libxml2.
mapnikc-plus-plusmappingcartographygis
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