DSP Robotics Support

For those of you who don't get your FS news from the "alphas" Slack group, you may be interested to see this...
Cavonix - Rapid Application Development

Yes, the screenshot appears to show one of the FlowStone alphas (e.g. there are two CPU meters). Yes, the Cavonix "team" includes Malcolm "Malc" Barbour and Carl Owen - developers/directors of DSPr. Cavonix was registered at Companies House (UK register of businesses) in January 2020. The parent company, AIM Technologies, shares the "non-DSPr" team-member and is a few years old, but has only ever filed "dormant" company accounts. Neither company reports significant financial capital.

MyCo is as surprised by this as anyone else - he was the first to spot it, in fact (the Cavonix website even implies that FS/SM was all Malc's own work!)

That's as much as anyone knows at the moment, but it looks astonishingly similar to the situation when SM/OutSim became FS/DSPr. Some secrecy surrounding the launch of a new company is to be expected, of course; but, given the current state of affairs with the forum (we're still unable to moderate anything) and MyCo's horror at the exploitation of his work, please excuse me if I have a rather nasty sense of deja-vu.

Yes, this is all too familiar, I hope this wont discourage Maik to continue his amazing work with FlowStone!

For some odd reason, the word "CAVspam" just jumped into my head...

Oh dear! Very worrying indeed, and I can understand if Maik gets upset.

Maik did try to contact Malc about the forum after I asked him to, but yesterday he told me that a week later he’d still got no response.

I sent a message via the contact form on the Cavonix site which I hope will reach Malc to put the forum right.

I know many here don’t use Facebook but I should mention again that I set up a group for us:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/998621100284460

Let’s hope that won’t become the only way for us to stay in touch.

deraudrl wrote:For some odd reason, the word "CAVspam" just jumped into my head...

It wouldn't be the first time - towards the end of the SM forums, it was discovered that Carl Owen (mentioned above as DSPr/Cavonix director) was running a sock-puppet account.

I see also that the Slack thread in which this was being discussed has disappeared overnight!

Just an update to calm everyone, I had a correspondence with Malc and he was kind enough to explain the situation to me. I am not at liberty to quote specific information, but the point is that there is no shady business going on like one might have suggested. Flowstone is not being replaced by another product, and the development of it can and/or will continue. So everyone can safely go back to working on their projects without any fear

trogluddite wrote:

deraudrl wrote:For some odd reason, the word "CAVspam" just jumped into my head...

It wouldn't be the first time - towards the end of the SM forums, it was discovered that Carl Owen (mentioned above as DSPr/Cavonix director) was running a sock-puppet account.

No opinion on that, but it just struck me that the website was papered front to back with "CAV<insert noun here>" word salad...I kept reading just to see if CAVkitchensink would put in an appearance.

And to hear them tell it, they invented radar, LIDAR, sensor fusion, rapid prototyping, and cloud computing.

@adamszabo
Many thanks, Adam - it's good to have some reassurance from someone we all can trust. I do wish that Malc and Co. would be a bit more forthcoming about their plans, though; after what happened with the SM forums, us cranky old-timers get the willies very easily! (PS: noted your e-mail, promise I'll get back to you shortly, once I've got a bit of de-spamming done!)

The main thing is that MyCo is happy with the arrangement, of course - and I guess he must be since he posted some new code commits today!

(and @Malc if you read this - apologies for any false conclusions I may have jumped to - and thanks for restoring the moderation tools!)

deraudrl wrote:And to hear them tell it, they invented radar, LIDAR, sensor fusion, rapid prototyping, and cloud computing

There's my problem right there - I expect people to damned well live up to their hyperbole!

Thanks Adam. Maik also got back to me to say that Malc had finally responded and as we now know the forum is fixed.

And trog, thank you so much for deleting all that spam overnight. I believe there were nearly 50 pages of it in the Off Topic section and numerous bits in the main Topics.

My one big wish is that Malc would be more communicative and more easily reached, at least by his moderators. Still, good news though eh?

What does that mean, 'the forum is fixed' ?