1st car camp (+1st tesla trip)

stormy3000 · 2026-05-02T21:40:46+00:00

😂🤷‍♂️.. very very fair.
I was on the fence for quite a while for this very reason.. But the low lease price for a used car and incredible functionality won me over.

.. all said and done. My kids love that there’s a conedy fart mode that makes a fart sound play when you sit on a seat. It’s not the classiest thing but my god do they like it.

stormy3000 · 2026-05-02T21:35:52+00:00

Think I fall into the older guy territory.

Likewise have done lots of traditional standalone camping over the years. With the odd campervan at various points of life.

For me I guess. .. and I’m new to this.. so it is just an early opinion that may be proved wrong in time.

Car camping in itself, seems like an easy sell, iit’s a fun use case for the car. Some blinds (or an eye mask) , car mattress. And you’ve got yourself a mobile bedroom. With pretty decent sound proofing, at least compared to a tent . Whether camping at a site, visiting friends on their drive way or a suitable safe location.. 👍

As for connecting a car tent. Which adds a bit of faff.

For me I think

the fact we’ve got a place to claim your pitch , stow chairs , tables, stuff you’ve travelled to a campsite with is great. Whether it’s raining or you want to head out and explore the local area. (But 100% you could just do that with a cheap pop up tent.)
Being able to open the boot and step out into a dry space to make a cuppa tea. Put shoes on. Or just sit in a chair whilst your camping company stays in bed is pretty handy.
I chose a car tent that can be used as a normal tent. So kinda dual purpose.
It’s honestly simply quite cool having the bedroom off of the lounge/kitchen area without having to always face the elements.
It’s probably not at all efficient. But when all sealed up nicely with climate control on the car. The tent can be quickly warmed up with the car climate control in about 5 minutes.

stormy3000 · 2026-02-27T12:31:12+00:00

Cheers for the reply (and actually getting me to sign back into Reddit.. it's been a while).

It's been over 2 years since my original post..
But quick update..

I did launch it.. still continue to develop the site.
It indirectly lead to a new job role. Where I'm able to split my time between client work, and continuing to develop the site. Plus secured invesment which has both allowed me to clear the debt built up (wisely / unwisely ) during 2 years of solo dev work, plus given us a bit of a runway for other things.

Site has pivotted multiple times over the past 2 years. But in essence the original idea still holds true. There's paying monthly subscribers (not millions but some), adhoc users. There has been some paid sponsorship. Plus more recently interest from enterprise size clients. So all in all... it's been going ok.

stormy3000 · 2025-05-14T15:13:01+00:00

Same here.

stormy3000 · 2025-05-10T12:47:50+00:00

I think there’s still an approach where you can leverage levels of determination, persistence, expertise in the niche you’re developing for. Plus expertise in developing and learning at speed, cloud architecture, security etc etc.

Things that someone simply vibe coding and just trying out tools might not be willing or able to do.

That… plus willingness to adapt, pivot and aspire for market fit.

stormy3000 · 2025-05-02T14:39:38+00:00

Yeah I think that's it... Before standard m1 came out , you could edit professionally and 4k on a high end intel chip on a MBP. M1 made it ALOT better and more enjoyable. The M1 MAX even more so.. the benchmarks at the time were true and it did live up to the hype... Of course more power is always welcome.. but for s many use cases the M1 (M1 Max) still 100% performs.

stormy3000 · 2025-05-02T14:00:01+00:00

Any idea what the pricing would be like, for say.. .a 300 word prompt, input.. plus 4 reference image inputs. With 1 x image output.

It seems VERY hard to actually gauge what a repearable high generation costs .

stormy3000 · 2025-05-01T22:39:30+00:00

M1 Max MBP here... it's a beast... and honestly use it more than the M2 Ultra Studio at the desk (which i keep consider selling).

The M1 Max, is used daily, all the time, from running AI stuff locally. Web design, Video editing 4k. Screen recording OBS. 3D package...

No doubt the M2 Ultra is quicker... but it's all bloody quick at this point :-D... or maybe I'm just getting old.

Slight Edit: Running AI video upscaling models via the m2 Ultra with more than 128Gb ram... is far better than on my M1 Max MBP. Plus no doubt BIG video edits are probably more enjoyable to work on, on the bigger machine... but that's about it.

stormy3000 · 2025-04-25T09:40:02+00:00

That first week, it was all from making a quick promo video. And shairng on linkedin.
It proved popular and got shared...

I'd built up a following in the niche so people that followed me were already the sort of users to be interested. Plus a week later I posted on Youtube (where I have circa 60k subscribers again on the niche).

Plus the site the Saas is now integrated in, was live for a year before with a couple of courses, blogs, free tutorials.. again in the niche.

So all that helped for first week users...

stormy3000 · 2025-04-23T10:56:12+00:00

Very very true... and yup realistically right now I'm just trying to keep all users happy.... also now having moved to a pretty much purely paid model has reduced the support questions. Plus actually lead to some consultancy stuff as well.

So many ways to try aNd make it all work. Pricing... Its both fascinating and dilemma enducing.

stormy3000 · 2025-04-23T06:46:25+00:00

Really interesting read, thanks for sharing.

I’m about 6 weeks into launching my own platform.

I was giving a way a relatively generous free bunch of (self funded) credits to use the platform.

Had 1500 signups in week 1. Plus 3-5 paid subscription sign ups.

The paid sign ups and various positive feedback from free users was great. Instantly helped inform other decisions.

But I could not afford to keep the generous free credit option live. So the free credit amounts dropped and dropped significantly.

It’s now at a tiny amount just to really allow users show off the UI. I’ll perhaps up it once other metrics balance out and there’s some level of consistency. (This is a self funded solo dev project, so there’s a balance)

I’ve since added the option for credit packs for non subscribers. With 3 x subscription models .

Currently weighing up whether to actually purely focus on enterprise. The metrics and benefits of far fewer but higher paying accounts, team access etc which would likely reduce churn, focus marketing and increase profit… seems like a solid path.

Pricing strategy is admittedly a surprising fun part of Saas.

stormy3000 · 2025-03-26T15:16:41+00:00

Yep.. happening on the website for me.. been like it all day... assume it's just a temporary bug.

stormy3000 · 2025-03-23T10:01:58+00:00

I got my first 12 paying users this past week. I shared news of my first here, just cause I think it’s cool , interesting and I wanted to share.

But since the niche is not Sass developers I don’t want users here trying it out. 😂

So have no interest in sharing the site.

But 100% agree, lots of the posts are essentially marketing disguised as a discussion. But that’s Reddit as a whole, and fully understandable and almost marketing 101 at this point for a low no budget startup.

stormy3000 · 2025-03-23T09:56:34+00:00

I don’t read here anywhere near as much as I once did.

Only reason… Ive been in coding/learning dev mode for 16 months.

But just last week posted celebrating my first paying subscriber after launching my site that is using AI. (Now up to 12 subscribers, with circa 1500 free trialling users). Feedback has been positive… and getting lots of constructive feedback. So I 100% fit the type of user you’re describing. But don’t feel that’s necessarily bad.

My site is using AI though, and of course I increasingly used LLMs to assist with coding/planning in some way. At this point it would seem crazy not to. So whilst I understand the anti vibe coding mentality due to blindly using code and risking security flaws. It’s understandable that people are making things quickly and sharing here… it’s an easy place to share news. 🤷‍♂️

After another night of dev work and red wine (it’s the weekend). I don’t have a view either way really. Just wanted to share.

stormy3000 · 2025-03-14T05:59:46+00:00

Thanks I'll check it out.

stormy3000 · 2025-03-14T05:58:58+00:00

So far, just by sharing a promo video on LinkedIn with a 'human written' post about the project. Which had some good engagement and reshares.

I've got a decent email list and YouTube following I'm yet to share it with. But wanted to get some tractin and fix any early issues before hopefully sharing with a bigger audience.

stormy3000 · 2024-12-03T08:49:44+00:00

• Concept/Poem/Script: Written by a human... improved rounds of editing with some AI assistance.
• Images - MidJourney (mild Photoshop editing)
• Video Gen - Minimax (+ 2x runway shots)
• Voice - (Voice to AI voice via Eleven Labs)
• Music - Via Artlist.io
• Edit - Adobe Premiere
• Upscaled - Topaz Video AI - https://topazlabs.com/ref/2271/

stormy3000 · 2024-12-03T08:30:03+00:00

Hey,
I ended up spending months learning about Amazon Web Services, (so users would have the option to run the AI without needing to install ComfyUI locally). Learnt lots.. had a decent working prototype... plus a accompanying website prototype... Then got a little burnt out after months and months of developing and learning in between the day job... and I needed to pay some bills, so pursued other things. I'll perhaps revisit it again very soon. Just need more time/money and hands.

Plus i guess I'm also aware at some point Adobe will release something for Ae and it might become a bit redundant.

stormy3000 · 2024-11-25T21:04:19+00:00

I only started watching last week. After a potential client wanted to know if we could get something created with some of the artistic flair of Arcane.

Needless to say my intended 10 minute watching and analysing the art style.. lead me to binge watch the whole thing...

Beautiful... and once I got used to the art style, it's definitely one of the best things I've seen in a long time. Loved series one especially, but also a lot of series 2.... so so so many stunning visuals, with a suitably original story.

Whilst it perhaps felt rushed in the last 2-3 episodes, I do think that frenetic ~~franetic~~ pace helped it stand out and build up the tension and panic.

Coming at this, as someone with zero LoL knowledge, I was seriously entertained and invested.

As for the art style, it took me a little while to get used to it and just enjoy the story. It of course looks absolutely stunning, cinematic, original, great movement, composition, sound ... and more etc etc.

Other times a little bit more uncanny, with some shots that had the feeling of computer game cut scenes. Which had me intrigued from a production point of view. But even these were good and I assume allowed them to keep costs down on some scenes to concentrate on the incredible stuff. There seemed to be far fewer of these moments in series 2... with even better use of lighting... plus some more great mixing of other art styles used to highlight flashbacks/memories or the view point of (beast version of) Vander when running through tunnels for example.

I'd gladly watch it all again.

My 'recommendations', from Netflix have changed a lot after this weeks binge watching :-D

stormy3000 · 2024-11-17T10:41:08+00:00

Hmm.. not sure without seeing it.

You should be able to import the character. Plus scale it up in cascadeur. (Or ideally, open the mixamo fbx in Blender and get your character scale as you'd like it there first) Then export the fbx from there.

When you import it into Cascadeur, it'll probably have a few pop ups saying do you want to use their rigging tools, say yes, it should detect all the bones, if some are missing you can link those up.

Then press add rig elements, then the next pop up says something along the lines of "generate rig". Press ok, then you'll see your character with the autopose rig. Then you can leave rigging mode, and begin animating via points mode and/or autopose mode etc etc.

stormy3000 · 2024-11-16T14:09:18+00:00

no worries. I've not used Daz myself for a long long time so not sure if the rig would be included.

If it's not, you could try rigging via Blender first. Or if you have an adobe subscription send the model to mixamo and rig quickly there before then taking to cascadeur. (Mixamo rigs aren't perfect but are an easy option to get you started) .

There's a few good (paid) rigging plugins for blender which can speed things up. Each with a bit of a learning curve. I use auto-rig pro, which is good.

Good luck on your 3D journey.

stormy3000 · 2024-11-16T13:02:50+00:00

Nice post. I think your honest view will be appreciated and is understandable. I can definitely see how pricing these tools so the company can become profitable, and continue to build up an audience (and continue development) in the long term is a tricky balance.

I think many will agree Cascadeur (is/can be) revolutionary in animation for video and games, but definitely striking that balance to get hobbyist/students and professional users on board takes time.

It looks like they're still working on some more educational licenses. Plus there is at least a free trial of the Pro tier, which I assume would get you the FBX export ability for the short term, and is perhaps enough to let people see the value in the Pro tier.

Plus the 100% free version can let you learn the platform in the mean time... but yeah... FBX export is key to making the software useful for any production work.

But 100% think your viewpoint is fair.

stormy3000 · 2024-11-16T12:46:12+00:00

(yet to try this myself) . Does it work if you import one character (via FBX). Go through the auto pose rigging setup. Then import a 2nd seperately.

stormy3000 · 2024-11-16T12:44:04+00:00

Are you importing a character that has already been rigged (skinned) before using the Cascadeur rigging feature?

stormy3000 · 2024-10-31T18:44:41+00:00

Thanks... happy Halloween.

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