A bicycle is perhaps one of the most repairable pieces of equipment one can own — no matter what’s wrong with it, and wherever you are on the planet, you’ll be able to find somebody to fix your bike without too much trouble. Unfortunately as electric bikes become more popular, predatory manufacturers are doing everything they can to turn a bike into a closed machine, only serviceable by them.
That’s bad enough, but it’s even worse if the company happens to go under. As an example, [Fransisco] has a bike built by a company that has since gone bankrupt. He doesn’t name them, but it looks like a VanMoof to us. The bike features a light built into the front of the top tube of the frame, which if you can believe it, can only be operated by the company’s (now nonfunctional) cloud-based app.
The hack is relatively straightforward. The panel for the VanMoof electronics is removed and the works underneath are slid up the tube, leaving the connector to the front light. An off the shelf USB-C Li-Po charger and a small cell take the place of the original parts under a new 3D printed panel with a switch to run the light via a suitable resistor. If it wasn’t for the startling green color of the filament he used, you might not even know it wasn’t original.
We would advise anyone who will listen, that hardware which relies on an app and a cloud service should be avoided at all costs. We know most Hackaday readers will be on the same page as us on this one, but perhaps it’s time for a cycling manifesto to match our automotive one.
Thanks [cheetah_henry] for the tip.
The real solution is to explain to manufacturers that we don’t want cloud anything. Even if we would like some cloud functionality it should be optional. If something arrives and requires a cloud, send it back. If we all did that it would stop.
Unfortunately Google and Apple are accepted as necessary for life now. 80k is poverty level for a family of 4, can’t afford “basic necessities” like a 4,000lb SUV to play Mad Max on your morning commute.
My favorite is people working at chains that have to drive past one or more of their same chain to work at a different one.
Also see some projects to enable offline functionality: https://github.com/Poket-Jony/vanbike-lib
It does not support the first gen non-E-bike models yet.
I knew things were going downhill two decades ago when I had to be connected to the internet to play Half Life 2.
That’s pretty much just false. You needed Internet access to activate/register HL2 (once) – never to play it.
And for updates of course.
DRM was not in all versions of the game. Sounds like you were lucky.
The only DRM in HL2 was Steam itself. You needed to connect to the internet to download Steam, install the game, run it once – and from there on its offline.
Yeah, in theory. The problem was, a) I had dial-up at the time, and you had to download all updates before it would let you play offline, which made it unplayable for some time; and, b) you had to set Steam to offline mode, but occasionally it would “reset” and tell me I had to log on before I could play again in offline mode. So yes, assuming everything was updated and properly handshaken (handshook?), you could play offline. But for me at the time, with dial-up, having to share a single phone line with two other people, this was a major hassle that on more than one occasion prevented me from playing a single-player game that I had already purchased in full.
Someone sent me that game while I was deployed in Iraq. I still remember how mad I was when I realized I couldn’t play it. Until then I was blissfully unaware of what DRM was.
“The real solution is to explain to manufacturers that we don’t want cloud anything.”
We DO explain things to manufacturers – ALL the time. Everytime we buy something from them, that’s telling them something. And when we buy things that we SAY we don’t want… well… dollars speak (much) louder than words. The problem is that the “we” you refer to is the Hack-a-Day crowd, not society at large. Society at large keeps telling the manufacturers that “we” DO want more things I can do with my phone regardless of the long-term implications. :-)
So maybe we (intelligent people) should find a way to regulate what businesses do, because the average consumer is incompetent and is only good at creating their own hell for everyone else to live in. Democracy isn’t the only way.
democracy is the only way people get exactly what they ask for and deserve, good and hard.
more regulation just makes larger companies to deal with regulation. small companies go out of business trying to deal with regulation. larger companies don’t care what you think. your way creates more of what you claim to not want.
Because we can’t make regulations that only effect large companies and not small ones, that would be impossible.
“We DO explain things to manufacturers – ALL the time. Everytime we buy something from them, that’s telling them something.”
I had the dumb idea to try to sell cars for a while, in the mid-1980’s. I didn’t realize when I got into it how corrupt that industry is, and that salesmen are trained to play with the customer’s head. Anyway, most of the cars on the lot were fully loaded, with all the options. It wasn’t that the customers wanted motors in the seats and all that other stuff, but that’s where the dealer made the real profit, even if the price was reduced just to placate the customer by making him think that at least he wasn’t paying for all those things he didn’t want.
Neither people nor chain stores are interchangeable.
The problem with saying this here is that we (had audience) probably would not send it back. We’d crack it open and put in our own stuff.
They already know. They don’t care. They know that they can screw some more value out of you with the apps, so you will get the apps.
80k is poverty level for a family of 4? Doesn’t have to be. Really depends what you waste your money on. Too much keeping up with the Jones’s perhaps.
I didn’t say it sbould be, I grew up on 1/3 poverty and live at ‘half’ now. A lot of people don’t realize what programs they may qualify for either.
“If something arrives and requires a cloud, send it back. If we all did that it would stop.”
Tons of stuff is improved by cloud use. Multiplayer gaming, mobile phones, streaming devices, etc. Not everything, sure.
“80k is poverty level for a family of 4, can’t afford “basic necessities” like a 4,000lb SUV to play Mad Max on your morning commute.”
That just isn’t true. The poverty level in the US is 30k for a family of 4. With an 80k income you can live in a nice house, drive a nice car, go on holidays and extend the family with a few more children as well. With that amount of money are pretty much living the good life. No idea what the weight of a car has to do with anything, or why you think people play video games while driving. Pretty sure that isn’t allowed yet, even with the best self driving, Tesla FSD, you have to keep watching the road.
“My favorite is people working at chains that have to drive past one or more of their same chain to work at a different one.”
Ok and? Should they send letters to all the customers demanding that they shop at another store because it increases travel time for an employee? Your argument doesn’t make any sense. People are hired where there is a demand.
I’m very confused by your post.
I warned about a similar thing with the belgian bike brand required a smartphone to use it:
https://www.bfmtv.com/auto/electrique-et-connecte-nous-avons-teste-le-velo-cowboy-3_VN-202007080157.html
There were rumours of bankruptcy recently, and users started to worry about loosing access to their bikes.
Told you so!
Meanwhile, boycott those brands that require you to have a smartphone/app/internet to use your bike.
I remember having this conversation with a colleague who was so proud of his app controlled bicycle. He’s been rather quiet since VanMoof went under.
I do wonder if this is just the thin end of the wedge though, there are a lot of EVs which are cloud connected and app linked now
I opposed connected ebikes, like the belgian Coyote, where all the users started to worry when there were rumourd if bankruptcy like VanMoof.
Don’t buy those ebikes where you need a smartphone/app/internet/server to use it.
s/Coyote/Cowboy
A few months ago I needed a new oral thermometer, sadly I was in a hurry at the drug store and just grabbed one – thought it was somewhat expensive – found out why when I got home and tried to use it – it wouldn’t do anything unless I installed an App on my phone – sorry no – went to another store and got a basic thermometer cheaper and works fine with nothing fancy –
Got a camcorder last year and it didn’t want to let me upload my video files without a special program on my PC – so I now pull the SD card and read it directly – what a piece of garbage all
FTA: “The bike features a light built into the front of the top tube of the frame, which if you can believe it, can only be operated by the company’s (now nonfunctional) cloud-based app.”
Wait, WHAT? blink blink blink
So you’re cycling merrily along, it starts to get dark, and instead of pressing a button on the handlebars or flicking a switch on the lamp unit, you have to whip out your smartphone, pray you have network signal, and send a request to the company’s servers to in turn send a message back to the LED light that is about 18″ away from you, to switch it on?
In the immortal words of Professor Farnsworth, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore”.
If that was their level of thinking, then VanMoof /deserved/ to go bust.
Then again, I am of an age when bike lights looked like THIS:
https://itshambles.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ever_ready_lights.jpg
It is getting weird out there with focus on cloud based -to-phone garbage. At least right now we can just say no, and buy a manual bike that you get ‘exercise’ by pedaling, and add a light with a manual switch. And one can still keep all your data and applications on PC ‘local’ (at least on Linux so far). ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ seems to be a ‘lost’ cause on this planet.
I seldom see a rider on an ebike pedal.
To some people, an ebike is a scooter with an excuse.
to depressingly many people, ebikes are mopeds they can get away with riding on the non-motorized trails.
i’d be willing to admit the things there, as mobility aids. but it’s rare i ever see them used as such, and their more common set of users are souring me on the things.
Agree. For most people they’re unlicensed motorbikes. A fraction of the cost, because they’re cheap unsafe crap with unbalanced battery packs waiting to catch fire, and no insurance, licence, or road tax. And no helmet.
I don’t normally say this, but the government needs to regulate them. They should have a licence plate like every other motorbike.
They’re expecting you to have your phone in a holder on the handlebars, app always open, so it can tell you utterly useless things like how fast you’re going – while sucking up your location data.
It probably doesn’t send every request through the company servers (although it probably logs every action to the company servers eventually). I have an expensive medical device that requires an app to use but what it actually does is immediately communicate over bluetooth, it doesn’t need a network connection. The app does have to be logged in to work though and it will just randomly log out and at THAT point it requires a network.
It’s not even very good at what it does, you’d think you should be able to get perfect customisation of every parameter, but no, just the same basic functionality as every device without a mandatory phone and login screen has had for years and years.
Honestly I’d never buy that to begin with but if someone gave me the bike I’d just buy a $10 clip on headlight and be done with it. If I’m less than 100% lazy I’d maybe strip out all the electrics too
He did buy a clip on light . . . and it was stolen.
They also clip off when you go into the shop. Lesson learned, cost: $10.
As Douglas Adams said, there’s a really simple solution to every seemingly complex problem (and here it is, for this situation)…
Don’t use, or buy absolutely ANYTHING which requires the use of an “app”; from “free fries” to that brand-new, shiny red, AWD, fire-breathin’ V-10.
German here. The bicycle light is not a trivial thing!
In order to meet street regulations, you must adjust the light’s reflector in the right angle.
There are certain ways to do it correctly!
Otherwise, you will blind pedestrians, car drivers and other cyclers!
Example:
https://fahrradbeleuchtung-info.de/vorschriften-fuer-fahrradbeleuchtung-nach-stvzo
https://fahrradbeleuchtung-info.de/fahrradscheinwerfer-richtig-einstellen
Also, LED light is very very bad! Too bright!
A halogen lamp or incandescent lamp is more eye-friendly! IMHO!
PS: A mountain bike doesn’t belong on street! Use a city bike instead!
And please wear a helmet and ride on correct side of the street.
Thank you for your attention.
Just get a less bright LED? They make a huge range of brightnesses.
There’s no reason a mountain bike can’t ride on the street, it’s a bike. Use what you got, you don’t need two bikes.
Hi, my comment originally was meant to be both
a helpful warning and to be a bit humorous (to suit typical German stereotype of being lawful).
However, now you’re asking, here’s an official answer to it. 🙂
From German fine catalogue, I mean. 😉
FAQ:
“- Why are mountain bikes often not roadworthy?
This is primarily sports equipment.
These bikes are actually not intended for use on public roads.
Does it need to be retrofitted?
In order for a mountain bike to comply with legal regulations,
you must bring various lighting devices and reflectors with you.
A bell is also required.
What are the risks if a mountain bike is not roadworthy?
If deficiencies are noticed during a traffic check, the catalog of fines provides for a warning fine of between 20 and 35 euros.”
Also important is this detail, I think.:
“- Brakes
In road traffic, a bicycle needs at least two brakes that can be operated independently of each other.”
https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/mountainbike-verkehrssicher/
Aside from the fact that this seems very pretentious, it definitely makes sense somehow.
Being merely German road traffic regulations or not. 😉
I think you confuse brightness with spot intensity. While it is true most LED don’t try to make anyone looking into them comfortable, it isn’t impossible to do. I myself would like a LED with less blue intensity and a spread out hot spot.
Hi, I think that cars have same issues.
The introduction of the Xenon and LED lamps made things much worse.
Halogen technology was much more eye friendly.
Dutch here. The bicycle light is a trivial thing.
In order to meet street regulation, you have to use something that lights up. Matches don’t work as they burn out quickly, but a tiny LED is fine. You can get them everywhere. If the lights don’t work, ride with a friend who has at least a front or rear light working, for safety.
LED lights are great as they are cheap. Other lights are too expensive!
PS: If it has two wheels and no gasoline engine, it’s a bicycle and belongs on the street, on the sidewalk, wherever you want to go is fine! Especially mountain bikes are great, for all our flat mountains! Drive anywhere you want, in fully dark clothing, no helmet, just make sure you don’t die. Traffic laws don’t apply to bicycles.
(our cultures are so different)
Wow! That does sound like it’s almost like in Holland, doesn’t it? 😃
But isn’t it a bit dangerous to bicycle on the dikes all time?
I mean, it must he difficult to ride in the swamps all day!?
And how do you bicycle with clogs? 🤔
(I’m just kidding. My apologies for my bad sense of humor, too.)
Hi! Here’s a more serious reply.
I’d like to thank you for your info, I sadly haven’t been in the netherlands so far.
Which is sad, because it’s a beautiful country.
My original comment about the bicycle lights was meant semi-serious, though.
Here in Germany, the bicycle is very common in daily life, both in villages and big cities.
And the lightning is something that’s often beeing set up incorrectly.
You have cyclers here who are either don’t have lights on
in the darkness or cyclers who have there light set up incorrectly.
And that’s really a problem, because it really blinds other people, even in 20m distance.:
They then don’t see the bicycler anymore, but just a bright halo of “something”.
In the city, this can be fatal and lead to real casaulties.
With advent of the bright LED lights it got worse and I tell you why:
Here in good old Germany we have bicycles with traditional dynamo+incandescent lamp combo.
But because we now also have need for a standby light (if bike stands still),
many cyclers do add third-party LED lamps (with battery) to their existing bicycle.
They simply mount them above the traditional reflector,
without knowing that they have to take care of right angle, too (3.5 degree, afaik).
The problem could be avoided if the bikes had rechargeable batteries in their system. Like a real car has with its dynamotor (light machine).
Unfortunately, that’s not the case yet.
In practice, it gets even worse: Some bicycle users do use LED lamps as direct replacement for incandescent lamps.
Which results in strong flickering/flashing.
The culprit is this: The incandescent lamp does support both AC and DC power, the dynamo makes AC due to lack of rectifier.
Now, since LED lamps are in fact diodes on their own,
they will light up only when the correct polarity appears for a short moment.
Ideally, a bridge rectifier would be needed to fix this issue.
But apparently, no one has really thought about this.
Hah, I installed magnets in my rear wheel and now my lights are always on when the bike is moving.
No need to remember to charge them, bring them or turn them on because they’re not (easily) removable and can’t be turned off!
“No need to remember to charge them, bring them or turn them on because they’re not (easily) removable and can’t be turned off!”
The downside to that… if you’re then rendered motionless by, say, a puncture, then you have no lights, although I suppose while fixing it you could spin the wheel with a free hand to give intermittent light!
Fixing a flat tyre by nothing but moonlight is tricky. Don’t ask me how I know.
Or waiting at the traffic lights!
When was the last time you saw a cyclist actually “waiting at the traffic lights”?
A supercapacitor, or NiMH, Or NiCD, or LiFePO4 could solve that pretty easily
One VALID reason to have cloud-based things that shouldn’t be cloud-based: Theft deterrent. Thieves are going to want to steal something that other people want and that can’t be traced.
Of course there are some things that are inherently cloud-based. Without some kind of “cloud” (network) it’s not feasible for a billion people to each have a device that lets any two of them talk to each other at any arbitrary time of day or night, with millions of other pairs of people doing the same thing. Doable in theory, yes. Feasible, no. But that’s not a bicycle.
My guess is that they made the light cloud-based in the hopes of one day charging a subscription to use it. That’s another practice I will never get behind.
Needs some AI. With location data the AI can figure out if it’s dark in your area and automatically turn the bike lights on – how brilliant (ha!) is that!
Much better than some stupid light sensor. That would be way too simple.
Combine it with a camera and you could even auto-unlock your bike. You could even license this for 1 to 10 users of the same bike, to make sure only licensed users are able to use the bike.
There’s an obvious lesson here that companies that buy into the extremely stupid idea that things like this should be cloud/app/phone based are missing:
Companies that do this go bankrupt. Wave after wave of them.
So why would you try if it’s going to cost you your business? Do you think you’re the magical snowflake company that’s cracked the code, that’s figured out you can sell cloud based bicycles? You alone have figured out how to convince people that your cloud is somehow better than all the others?
The truth no company wants to hear is that none of their customers want this crap. And they’re willing to set themselves on fire rather than learn they’re not unicorns.
I think they’re looking at the same situation you’re looking at, and coming away with a different conclusion: that the magic sauce is precisely staying in business through subscription services, and they’re convinced that THEIR subscription service offerings will be sufficient to get them through times when people aren’t buying a lot of their product.
I think the majority of technical innovation these days is in trying to convert buyers into renters.
Oh, it’s clear as crystal that this is the result of vulture capitalists trying to extract rent.
What I’m saying is that the entrance to this particular cave is littered with the bodies of the fallen knights who tried to enter. You’ve got to be a special kind of stupid to step over them all and still try to enter the cave.
Investors probably. It is not just a new bike, it is a cloud-connected bike!
Possibilities are endless. Even if none of them make sense or could be done just as easily without a cloud.
Cloud connected bike, washing machine that can update its cycles, a juice press that can look up juice pod recalls, a $200 cloud connected flower pot, that enables people to grow their own basil,
or a toaster that can check the cloud for whatever a toaster needs to do.
All mostly garbage, but maybe one of them will be the next big thing, or at least become a status symbol for the ones with disposable income or the financially unaware.
The cloud connected e-bike could download new blink patterns for the light, a more aggressive acceleration profile for starting on a light turning green. An eco-mode. Weather alerts. Alarm you on your maintenance schedule and deals from affiliated shops nearby. Anything that ties the consumer more permanently to the company. And few of that has to be implemented when the bike hits the market. Most is just there as a future possibility, possibility is what investors are looking for.
So the cloud-bike didn’t work (this time), let’s try something else. If one out of ten survives, profit!
VCs squirt/sploosh in their pants at the thought of ‘recurring revenue’.
Remember the cloud connected Juicer that would squeeze for you a $10 cup of carrot water?
Last seen the twit behind that idea was looking for funding for ‘raw water’ delivery…featuring ‘recurring revenue’.
I call him a twit because it appears he didn’t just take the VC money and run, wasted it on the juicer project.
How many times have those fools funded ‘selling dry dogfood over the internet w free delivery’ as a business model?
“Cloud connected bike, washing machine that can update its cycles, a juice press that can look up juice pod recalls, a $200 cloud connected flower pot, that enables people to grow their own basil,
or a toaster that can check the cloud for whatever a toaster needs to do….”
My optimism tells me that at least one of your examples has to be fictional.
My realism tells me that every single one of them is from real life.
What a time to be alive, eh?
There was some concern when Van Moof went into receivership that some of the bicycle’s functionality would stop working as a consequence. This concern led to third-party alternatives to the Van Moof app being released, but in fact the Van Moof app continued to be maintained annd avaluable throughout the bankruptcy from which Van Moof emerged bankruptcy in 2023. Van Moof continues to release new bicycles.
Van Moof’a design was based around a smartphone interface supporting a minimal set of hardware controls on the bicycle itself. These design decisions were a big part of what made people want to pay more for the bicycles; it seems unlikely that someone who had decided to spend more on a connected bicycle would be unpleasantly surprised to discover they had wound up with a bicycle that was connected.
The recommended setting for the lights was (and is, I think) “auto” which means they come on automatically when it gets dark, no phone required.
How doe the bike know when it dark?
Photoresistor? They cost a cent retail.
I think it’s OK to have an ‘app connected’ bike, to cut down on control inputs. But…
) It must be entirely local – i.e. using Bluetooth or a local Wi-Fi connection to set things up (preferably Bluetooth). For devices in the home, using something like Zigbee or Matter means you can go cloudless.
) The manufacturer should provide documentation on the interface, which would allow third parties to implement their own apps should the existing app become unavailable. Or ideally, use a standard interface, e.g. a heart rate monitor should use the Bluetooth class for such devices.
) The app they supply for people who don’t want to use a 3rd party solution, should not require a cloud connection for any functionality, except where that is totally unavoidable.
I’ve seen worse. A relative bought a very expensive e-bike from Specialised some years ago, with drive mechanics from a company called BionX. BionX went bust a few years later, and it turns out that that pretty much killed the bike off. Not immediately, and not through cloud connectivity, but when the battery eventually died there was no way to get a replacement. BionX were so keen to get the money for replacement batteries and to stop anyone using third party alternatives, that all communication between the controller, the battery and the hub itself was encrypted. To overcome that, you would need special tools to pull the hub apart and then would have to design a replacement circuit board to fit in the limited space therein. The bike is still sittting in the garage.
Simple solution:
Small block Chevy.
Same as always.
To add to that, here’s a video of someone demonstrating how to replace that proprietary technology. Note that it is very heavily edited, and that his hands get quite well bloodied in the process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc8OJtFRUng
👍
Here’s a video showing an alternative way to deal with this sort of thing.
https://youtu.be/N9wsjroVlu8?si=oN5p_C3JoTU_EnAb
“We would advise anyone who will listen, that hardware which relies on an app and a cloud service should be avoided at all costs”
Hear hear.
amen
I don’t know what is dumber: Designing a bike with a light that requires a cloud-based app to turn on, or the person buying it. I HATE “the cloud”.
I wouldn’t say they are defunct. I use my VanMoof every day. . The app for them was literally just updated 17hrs ago.