ANOTHER STEP FORWARD

As the plane was touching down in Bologna airport last Sunday evening, I felt a bit of butterflies in my stomach. Not because of the difference in altitude but just because I was slightly worried. In five days, I was about to stand up in front of the people who came from all over the world and tell them all I know about the FBS4 system and what we can do to assist you with adapting modules. I had other things on my mind before that. I had to prepare to meet all our partners from all over the world in the same setting – the Abrites Italy office in Chioggia. By the way – what a facility. It was my first visit to the Abrites Italy building and I was taken aback by what can only be described as a cathedral to automotive diagnostic training. All I can say is that if you have a chance to take a training there – do it.



The whole Abrites team worldwide got together, and we did many trainings and testing together, we exchanged ideas, and we talked about obscure vehicles from all the different countries. Our development team was also there, and they were provided with modules from vehicles previously unknown so that they could be added. We had a few vehicles to try different operations on. We also had a lot of fun because we don’t get the chance to get together and share our experience all that often. I must say that I was a bit worried about that too, especially when we have multiple people who would normally compete in one room, but I was wrong, very wrong. We have the best network of partners and I love seeing people collaborating on improving the tool and the customer experience with nothing but the best intentions.



Well, with the fun part over it was time to get really focused on the training. We had people flying in from Mexico and Chile, people from Norway, Poland and the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Nicaragua, Finland, so safe to say we had an eclectic group. I was starting to understand that my co-presenters and I had to be on top of our game. We quickly understood that we had some of the most advanced people working on MB vehicles we had met. I must just take a moment to thank the whole team, I will not name them but there were 10+ Abrites people, the videographers, photographers, organization team, and experts to which we were attached. To be completely honest with you we did explain in detail the structure of FBS4 and we spoke about the history of it, and the DAS system as a whole but there was another thing I tried to get across as a point. Through the knowledge and experience behind the system, sharing our complete understanding and through the compelling force behind the ideas we base our development work on it was my sole goal to push the guys who attended the training seminar to receive a bit more confidence to do more cars. So let me try and give you some of the cliff notes we provided to our colleagues who attended the seminar. Of course there are a lot more details, especially what the developers behind the project provided to the attendees but here are some of the topics we discussed:
1. How did Mercedes lock the modules to one vehicle by the VIN number thus “banning” replacement of modules.
2. Overcoming this lock.
3. Understanding the difference between adaptation in different modules – modules adapted by FBS data, modules adapted by SSID and modules adapted by VIN. Benefits and drawbacks from all of them.
4. FBS module adaptation depending on whether you have or don’t have FBS data. What causes the limitations, which modules can be adapted by reading and writing the data by the OBD, which can be read and written and read via the internal CAN, which can be read on bench. Of course, this led us to limitations. I did learn a lot and one of the things I learned was that FBS data can be extracted from many modules of damaged vehicles – even flood damaged cars.
5. We learned a lot about what the next things in the future versions of the software will come out.
6. We started two cars as all keys lost situation.



I think that all in all the training worked out well, I believe I achieved my goal of instilling a bit more confidence in the participants to take more FBS4 jobs on and having hands-on experience with cars. This is the most I got out of it, as well as the positive feedback from the participants. We also got some great ideas based on people’s needs for development.
I want to thank the participants and the developers who indulged us in this endeavor, and we plan to have a lot more training seminars – both free and paid training. Now just lastly, I wanted to address the cost of the training seminar as I got comments, not from the participants but from other people before the training. The reason for the cost was that we had to:
1. Buy one of the cars specifically for this event.
2. Take over Abrites Italy for the weekend.
3. Engage the minds of Abrites developers for the time being/ travel/ accommodation….

All of the above are not free, and believe me, we did not even break even.
Thank you for coming, I hope to see you again next time and I hope I can do that more often for even more people. Do not be afraid to use your AVDI and its licenses.

Until next time, try to have fun at work.
Alek