Intravee inventor has passed away

[fcx56]

I just received this very sad email in my inbox, it seems that Simon Allen, inventor and owner of the Intravee has passed away on the 23rd. While I didn't know him personally, he created a very reliable product and was always very kind in email correspondence. A sad day, an iBus pioneer will be missed.

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.

Richard

[UCrewX5]

Originally Posted by fcx56

I just received this very sad email in my inbox, it seems that Simon Allen, inventor and owner of the Intravee has passed away on the 23rd. While I didn't know him personally, he created a very reliable product and was always very kind in email correspondence. A sad day, an iBus pioneer will be missed.

I received the same email from Richard. Very sad indeed. I hope someone is able to pick up the pieces from where he left off and can keep running with the proverbial torch.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

[Smittyjf]

WOW,
I was involved in the first Beta testing. I still have my original IV in my garage.
I run the IV2 now and never had a problem with it.
That's very sad news.