Liebe Fanatics und Intravee Begeisterte

Heute musste ich leider von RichardP erfahren, dass Simon Allen unerwartet am 23igsten November gestorben ist. Der Zugriff auf die Server, die WebSeite etc ist zur Zeit nicht möglich, es ist auch unklar wie die zukunft des Intravee's aussehen wird.

An dieser Stelle sollten wir Simon gedenken, für sein tolles Produkte welches uns so viel Freude gemacht hat über all die Jahre. Rest in Peace my Friend.

Hier die originale Email welche ich von RichardP erhalten habe:

Hello,

As some of you may have noticed the Intravee web site and forum have been unavailable since the start of last week end. It is with great sadness that I must inform you that Simon Allen, the owner of Intravention Electronics and the designer of the Intravee, passed away suddenly on Friday 23rd November. Simon was a highly talented individual who will be greatly missed by anyone that knew him.

Intravention Electronics was run entirely by Simon, with a little help from a few enthusiastic volunteers, the entire computer infrastructure was based at his home and run and maintained by him. Although I do not yet know any details of what may happen in the future, as of Friday evening it would appear that the computers running the Intravention web site have been shut down. There is currently no access to the forum, web site, software library or support e-mail. I have only been able to e-mail you because I had a backup of the forum users with Customer, or higher, access permissions. The future of the Intravee product is, at best, unclear.

The Intravee hardware itself is generally very reliable indeed; the only hardware problem I am aware of is that it is possible to blow the internal fuse. I have a quantity of these fuses and can supply them if required. It may be technically possible to continue with Intravee production as the manufacturing facility has all the details, legally and financially it may be a different story.

The Intravee release firmware is reasonably bug free, but only supports the Professional Nav system to any significant degree. The pre-release V6.02 firmware is also generally quite stable; the very latest build 6.02-6940 is a significant upgrade to V6.01 with support for Business Radio, Business Nav and MID. I have copies of the various pre-release firmware builds and, again, can supply this on request.

It may be possible for me to do some limited development on the Intravee firmware, however this would have to be done in my spare time and so the scope would be quite limited. I have the source code and the knowledge of the Intravee, iBus and AI-Net to continue development – however, what I do not have is the ability to compile the source code to create the firmware file. Simon used a version of a compiler that he modified, it may not be possible to obtain or use this compiler.

I apologise for the unsolicited e-mail, but thought that there would be many users that would like to know the situation. If you would like to be removed from receiving any future e-mails please reply to this e-mail with “Remove” as the subject line, otherwise I will endeavour to keep you informed of any developments. In the meantime, if you have any questions or problems, please e-mail me directly.

Richard

R.I.P

Ich bin echt traurig über diese Nachricht.
Ich bin einer, der kein Zusatzmodul in sein Auto rein lässt und letztens hat meine Regel weiterhin bestand. Nur einer hat es geschafft und das ist Simon mit seinem Intravee. Dieses Teil hat immer noch unglaublich Potential und hebt das Auto in eine andere Liga, dazu gab es nicht einmal irgendeine Fehlfunktion oder Beeinflussing, unglaublich.
Ich habe die Befürchtung, dass niemand in der Lage sein wird, dieses Erbe fortzuführen. Wirklich traurig, RIP, mein Intravee lebt ewig.

So denke ich auch und schließe mich den Worten meines Vorredners an.
Echt heft, so ein plötzlicher Tod.

bin immernoch sehr schockiert aber genau so ist das Leben und der Tod manchmal, unverhofft.

Darf ich fragen: Wieso?
Das war ein dir "unbekannter Mensch", der halt ne kleine Hardware Box für MP3 an deinem Radio rausgebracht hat.

Doof, da es nun mit der Box unklar weiter geht. Aber wenn dir das wirklich so sehr an die Nieren geht, dann ist das imho schhon ziemlich ungewöhnlich.

weiß man denn woran er gestorben ist?

@SpeedUp:
Die imIntravee-Forum angemeldeten User haben die Mail erhalten, die Houbi oben veröffentlicht hat. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Du mußt schon Richard als unseren Kontakt zum Intravee nach mehr Infos fragen.
@Icefeldt: Hast Du mal genau die Storys von Houbi zum Intravee-Einbau gelesen? Woher nimmst Du die Info, das sich Simon Allen und Houbi nicht kennen?
Auch wenn ich Simon Allen nicht kannte, so gehörte er doch zu den Menschen vor denen ich auf Grund ihres Engagement und Knowhows viel Respekt habe. Wenn ein solcher Mensch stirbt macht auch mich das betroffen und traurig.

Viele Grüße,
Marvin

da ich ebenfalls angemeldeter User bin, habe auch ich diese mail erhalten.
Es hätte aber sein können, dass sich bereits jemand danach erkundigt hat oder auf Grund persönlicher Bekanntschaft mehr weiß.

"Schockiert" zu sein mag vllt. übertrieben scheinen, aber auch mich überkam beim Lesen der E-Mail ein beklommenes Gefühl. Ich kenne Simon zwar natürlich nicht persönlich, doch da ich mein Intravee erst seit kurzer Zeit besitze, hatte ich noch Anfang des Monats Kontakt zu ihm. Dabei war er überaus hilfsbereit bei allen Fragen und offen für Anregungen.

Es wäre sehr schade, wenn das Intravee mit ihm gestorben ist. Es ist wirklich bemerkenswert, dass er diese kleine Kiste nahezu allein entwickelt, vertrieben und supportet hat, auch jetzt noch, wo der "Kundenkreis" aufgrund des Alters der betroffenen Fahrzeuge stetig geschrumpft ist.

Ich habe leider weder viel Geld noch Fachwissen, aber falls sich ein paar begeisterte Programmierer fänden um das Projekt zusammen mit Richard am Leben zu erhalten, ließe sich mit dem so in Mode gekommenen Crowdfounding sicher auch mit kleinen Beträgen eine Basis für die weitere Entwicklung schaffen.

In diesem Sinne: May Simon rest in peace!

Heute von RichardP per Email gekommen:

Thank you all for responding to the news of Simon death, I’m now in contact with Simon’s brother and will try to pass on all your kind comments to the family. I don’t think they had any idea of the high regard Simon had with respect to the Intravee and in the internet community in general. There is as yet no date set for the funeral; I believe it is likely to be sometime the week beginning 10th December.

I have leant that Simon died of a massive heart attack that must have killed him almost instantly. Simon was not married but leaves his mother and brother. He was in his late 40’s.

After some serious digging around in my backups and archives, the future of the Intravee firmware development and support now looks much more secure. I have managed to recompile the firmware and load it onto my Intravee to confirm that it functions in the same way as the last version that was built on Simons computers.

Leigh at ToysInYourCar has asked me to convey his continued interest in selling the product, that he still has stock and that he has a supply of the Intravee fuses as well as my self.

My next focus will be on trying to organise a web site that can be used for hosting files and providing first line support information, hopefully a forum and support e-mail address too. At this stage I do not know if the Intravee forum information can be saved, this was hosted on Simon’s computers which have been turned off. Even with access to the computers I suspect that they will require passwords to access the data. Simon was very security conscious, his brother said it took them several days to access Simon’s room as he had a numeric key pad lock on the door! I have some rather old forum backup files, the last being from late 2010, so some of the information may be retrievable from those.

Sending firmware images and the Intravee documentation by e-mail is not sustainable, the documentation files in particular are too large to e-mail in any volume.

Leigh owns the domain name ToysInYourCar.com - Intravee II - iPod Audio Integration for BMW vehicles which currently redirects to the Intravee page on the ToysInYourCar web site. This would be the preferred domain name to host a new site.

In the short term Darren and Rob from BMW 5 Series Owners Board have agreed to host some files for people to download, you can find the thread at The Intravee thread - Audio & Navigation - BMW 5 Series Owners Board Attached to the thread you will find the latest firmware, V6.02-6941, the downloader program, user guide, supported devices and PXA Supplement documentation. Many thanks to Darren and Rob for their help and support. I’ll also use this thread to keep people updated and save some e-mail bandwidth.

There currently appears to be no reason why production of the Intravee hardware should not continue, although no details have even been discussed yet alone finalised. Although I have not yet talked to the factory where they are made, they should have all the components and information required for production. Simon set them up so they would normally have no reason to bother him!

That’s all for now, try to keep an eye on the www.bwm5.co.uk thread for future developments.

Richard