Up until this week, every TrailCurrent module on a wall belonged to us. That just changed. A hobbyist in Europe, who goes by enigma on the Discord, is putting a rig together from scratch, and they have not stopped at assembling what we already designed. They are adding to it.
A new face on the project
It started the way these things should. A polite hello on the server, and a heads-up that one of the building blocks our modules quietly share, the bit of code that lets them all talk over the same wire, was not yet posted online for the rest of the world. Fair flag. We had been rewriting it and had not yet thrown the doors open on the new version. They are open now: TrailCurrentCANLibrary on GitHub.
A new module: Australis
This is the part that surprised us. enigma is not just bringing up an existing module. They are designing one of their own, and they already have a working name and a clear scope.
i started making a new module highly inspired by borealis (working name for the module is Australis). which will be basically a borealis, but only using SDC41, with a choice of having 1-8 sensors per unit.
The name fits the lineup. Borealis is the northern lights. Australis is the southern. The idea of one box that can run one sensor or a row of them is the same trick we already use on Switchback, Torrent, and Tapper. Nice to see someone walk in and land on that pattern on the first try.
That little card in the screenshot is the thing we like the most. The dashboard is already set up to show a sensor that is still in a box somewhere in transit. No red error, no broken layout, no crash. It just sits there politely waiting. That is what we want this platform to feel like to add to.
A new application: a dog trailer
The use case is not a motorhome. It is not a camper. It is a dog trailer, and that is exactly the kind of thing an open platform should grow into without us having to bless it.
The main use case is to be inside a dog-trailer to keep an eye on co2, temp and humidity, and later being able to control the trailer-wide fan based on that.. So it's still baby steps.
This is exactly the kind of thing we built the platform to do. No subscription. No app store. The fan does not need to ask a cloud somewhere whether it is allowed to turn on. The sensor in the trailer and the switch on the fan talk to each other directly, on the trailer's own wiring, with or without a signal to the outside world.
Built in Europe
One thing that comes with a build outside our garage is a list of components that are not on our radar. enigma flagged one of them straight away.
I will however look at certain things that are more common here in Europe, for example the company Teltonika makes a lot of lte routers that are very commonly used in vans and rv's here, so when the day comes i will see if there's anything needed for sms alerts etc that needs to happen on the router and how to adapt it etc
Good to know. The router we recommend on our side of the Atlantic is the GL.iNet Spitz Plus. If Teltonika is what people already have in their vans and campers in Europe, the right move is to play nicely with one they already own rather than ask them to swap it out. We will pay attention.
The next step is the post office
The software side of Australis is built. The little chip that runs it has been programmed and is ready. What is missing is the parts in the box.
Now i need to order some sensors....
Once those arrive and get wired up, the placeholder card in the screenshot starts showing real numbers. Air in the dog trailer, on whatever device you happen to be holding.
A word from the builder
After real time in the repos, the documentation, and the build, enigma left us with this:
i have to say that i am quite impressed by the thought put into this project and the vast documentation
Coming from someone who just spent a week putting it together with no help from us, that means something.
What this means
To our knowledge, enigma is the first person outside the founding team putting TrailCurrent together. They are also, on day one, designing a new module instead of waiting for us to design it. That is the shape we wanted this project to take, and it is happening sooner than we expected.
The framing they put on their own work is the one we like most.
I can also be fully transparent that i'm just a hobbyist that likes to make things work..
That is the whole point. The hardware is open. The firmware is open. The CAN library is now public. If you want to make a thing work on a vehicle, a trailer, a boat, or a kennel on wheels, the pieces are there.
If you are building, or even just thinking about it, come say hello on Discord. We are not going to be the only ones doing this for much longer.