from Hacker News

Reverse Engineering a VanMoof E-Shifter – Part 2 – Decoding the Signals

by jandeboevrie on 1/15/25, 2:12 PM with 21 comments

• by cubeflake on 1/19/25, 12:32 PM

  Nice write up! I am also fiddling with my bike and have just figured how to pull the binary from the main M4 soc. Perhaps you could share your work with https://github.com/Bernardus/openmoof

  (Not my repo but has a lot of good info, I plan to share the binary as well once I made some progress in reversing it)

• by Traubenfuchs on 1/19/25, 5:06 PM

  The VanMoof e-shifter is awful: Every shift comes as an interruptive surprise which makes for a very uncomfortable ride. The test ride was the reason I did not get one.

  Cowboy bikes are much better, but mine broke on the second day. I sent it back.

  Now I got big legs thanks to those brittle novelty iPhone e-bikes failing me.

• by mcntsh on 1/19/25, 12:05 PM

  > The reliability of this e-shifter in the X3 and S3 has been argued as the cause of the failure and eventual bankruptcy of VanMoof

  I always wondered what exactly the problem e-shifters were trying to solve was. Is it the "ugliness" of shifting cables? Route them through the frame...

• by Neywiny on 1/19/25, 3:47 PM

  Can the second analyzer software not do the same measurement as the first? Coming from a point of ignorance here: I lucked into some higher and DLAs (though not 5v compatible so they wouldn't directly help here) and their softwares allow both decode and measurements

• by vr46 on 1/19/25, 2:55 PM

  Intriguing stuff here from a geek perspective, as I have an X2 and am only plagued by a lack of gears. I would expect e-shifters to have been made reliable by the time the 3 series came out, I didn't realize they were that bad, especially as I would love to see them everywhere. Having to adjust my son's bike shows how tough shifting gears can be, and the cable is constantly stretching. Plus, the whole getup freezes in winter.