Intravee Owner Passed Away! Anyone needing the v6.02 firmware I can help.

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the Intravee inventor/owner/caretaker, Simon Allen, sadly and untimely passed away this month so the forums, website and firmware services for Intravee and Intravention Electronics will be down indefinitely.

I got this information in a recent email from RichardP (see quotation below) in the UK who is well knowledge on the Intravee and BMW iBus system was closest to Simon on the Intravee project.

I have what looks to be the 'latest' 6.02 vers firmware update files and the pdf installation instructions on my PC. If anyone needs I can email it to
them.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:53 PM
Hello,

I'm RichardP from the Intravee forum; I've been involved with the Intravee on a non-commercial basis since it was first available and I am a moderator on the forum.

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.

PM sent.

I sent the files via email but there may be an issue of the exe Downloader file being sent over email.

Would it be possible to host the group of files as a .zip or .iso? Or convert to either of those formats. Not sure about sending .exe files, I'm sure most protocols flag those as malicious.

Hi,

I bought an Intravee last month which came with V6.01 so if you could send me the software that would be very helpful. Rather than mail them would you be able to dump all the necessary files in my "Dropbox" account as that saves any issues with .exe files. Otherwise very pleased so far although I am struggling to change the Intravee to UI 6 with the instructions given. Thanks for your help.

Darren and Rob at www.bmw5.co.uk have been kind enough to temporarily host a Intravee forum on their site. The forum is at http://forum.bmw5.co.uk/forum/117-intravee/ and there is a pinned thread which contains the latest firmware, downloader tool and documentation which you can download at http://forum.bmw5.co.uk/topic/75485-...travee-thread/. You will need to sign up to the forum to access the downloads.

Richard

Sad and shocking news indeed. A great product and a talented guy.

Jan 4th 2013 UPDATE: So far the files I have managed to email are working on the receiving end. If you are using hotmail or gmail expect to have issues with the exe file being sent to you as you may have to modify your firewall or email's virus blocker to permit the exe file to be uploaded to your computer.

However Richard has told me that there exist a newer update file to the one I have even though the files I am emailing are 100% functional and pretty much up to date in terms of getting the most out of your Intravee 2 in your BMW. read below.

Richard Parkinson

11/30/12

to me, dirtbikejunkie., BrehmMartin
Guys,

The firmware Olaf attached should be OK, but it's not the most recent.
You'll need the downloader program to update the Intravee firmware too.
I've added both dxxxxxxxx001@yahoo.com BxxxxMxxxx@online.de to my
mailing list so you'll both be kept informed.

I will try to obtain the latest version of this firmware as best and quickly as I could. Richard has also said there is a webforum where the newer firmware update files are temporarily being hosted for upload. Read below.

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 www.intravee.com 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 www.bmw5.co.uk have agreed to host some files for people to download, you can find the thread at http://forum.bmw5.co.uk/topic/75485-...travee-thread/ 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.

One change since this email was sent to me is Toys In Your Cars have ran out of stock of Intravee 2 units and the only place to get them for now seems to be eBay. Toys In Your Cars does seem to have the accessories for the Intravee in stock so all you would need to do is get a unit and the rest of the parts can be obtained on the Toys In Your Cars UK web store.

http://www.toysinyourcar.com/acatalog/intravee.html

I have also been getting a lot of mail about Intravee 2 installation and firmware update process. I remember it was complicated but the most important thing before anything can happen is obtaining the DB9 serial to serial (or serial to usb) cable from Radio Shack or elsewhere. If you are using Windows XP then, like I am, then the installation will be a breeze. However if you are using Windows Vista, 7 or 8 then I really cannot help in terms of what those operating systems require and what the limitations would be for connecting to an Intravee2.






This cable will DB9 connect your computer to the Intravee 2 after the Intravee 2 is connected to the car and the rest, if you are using WIndows XP, should be history.



Thanks.