from Hacker News

Making a smart bike dumb so it works again

by franciscop on 4/19/25, 9:57 AM with 201 comments

• by tails4e on 4/23/25, 1:37 AM

  This is a very real issue for even expensive items. If you buy a car today, doesn't it have some sw component that requires phoning home to work properly. What if that company goes bust? Or if a war breaks out and that company is in a country on the other side? Both Tesla and byd seem like challenging purchases with all that's going on

• by ctkhn on 4/22/25, 11:37 PM

  Maybe I've been listening to too much YKS but I can't imagine buying a bike that required me to use an app and company's cloud to control basic functionality like that

• by scottyah on 4/22/25, 9:39 PM

  I was hoping this was about the Copenhagen Wheel. I'd love if my expensive brick could get going again. It was my first lesson in "Don't trust a startup".

• by dheera on 4/22/25, 9:18 PM

  I detest this trend of needing an app for every piece of hardware.

  Just put the damn interface on the hardware. You are after all selling the hardware, not the app.

• by c2xlZXB5Cg1 on 4/22/25, 9:31 PM

  The light placement (so the mudguard casts shadows) would drive me insane

• by Aardwolf on 4/22/25, 9:17 PM

  > You can also charge this light with USB-C instead of the original micro-USB.

  A dynamo would be the next upgrade

• by MarceliusK on 4/23/25, 6:45 AM

  There's something beautifully satisfying about stripping away all the unnecessary "smart" layers just to bring back basic functionality

• by lutusp on 4/23/25, 3:35 AM

  Not the topic of most comments, but instead of a 22 ohm resistor that burns up the majority of the battery power to protect the LED from overcurrent, a switching power supply would allow the light to run more than twice as long for the same available battery energy.

  And I agree with other comments that linking products to their manufacturers is deplorable -- you don't own a modern product, it owns you.

• by xnx on 4/22/25, 9:54 PM

  Weird. That looks so much like a Vanmoof which typically has light buttons on the left handlebar. Might be a knockoff.

• by tchock23 on 4/22/25, 9:30 PM

  If anyone is looking to do the opposite (i.e., make a dumb bike smart) check out the QZ app (qzfitness.com). Made by a solo dev who is amazing at support despite the tiny price and lack of subscription. I have no affiliation, just thought anyone reading the original post might be curious about the opposite...

• by ThrowawayTestr on 4/22/25, 11:13 PM

  Watch out, the voltage out of that battery charger is the unregulated battery voltage.

• by verisimi on 4/23/25, 6:35 AM

  If government were 'for the people' it would be required that appliances etc work regardless of communicating with the parent company.

  Eg, it is probably already illegal to use the term 'purchase' for this sort of thing - as it actually seems like some sort of 'service contract' with terms for both parties to agree to. That items that need to 'call back to base' are allowed to be sold with no repercussions, tells you who the legal/governmental systems are serving.

• by pkphilip on 4/23/25, 2:23 PM

  This is a real issue with most vehicles these days. I have a pal with a Triumph Street Twin which gave the message in the console and they couldn't figure out what was causing it. The bike would go into limp mode indicating as though there is something wrong with the engine.

  They tried for months to diagnose why the message was coming up and they couldn't figure it out.

  It would be great to have a motorcycle with as little electronic magic as possible to allow it to be repaired easily

• by southernplaces7 on 4/22/25, 10:57 PM

  That companies would follow such absolute shit practices to the people who trusted them with their money for actual physical products is grotesque. It should even be treated as a type of fraud, downright. Fuck these "smart device" manufacturers that can't seem to help themselves against fucking the thing you bought right over with bullshit fashionable tech trends that barely work.

  That they do all this for the sake of extracting every possible penny out of you through data via forced app interaction only makes it more disgusting and parasitic. It used to b e that purely digital social media/ad-type companies mostly did this, now the very visible nonsense fashion is to cram as much extractive app-based shit into every possible physical product under the sun.

  I can't wait to see a mass consumer revolt against such garbage, putting these companies sales firmly down the toilet. To those of you who fund, found or promote such things in your ventures and pitches, simply: Fuck. You..

• by thih9 on 4/22/25, 10:20 PM

  > Now my bike has a button, you press it and the light turns on. It's like magic how simple it is!

  I recall no situations where I preferred an app as opposed to a regular hardware button like this.

• by frxx on 4/23/25, 4:03 AM

  Nice article and hack! Two things are confusing me here though:

  If this is a VanMoof, I believe they were sold in Japan and even had a Store in Shibuya

  Secondly, they were bankrupt, but to my knowledge were bought and is therefore still (again?) in business.

• by mg794613 on 4/23/25, 3:40 AM

  How did that VanMoof end up in Japan?

  That's quite the trip it made.

  Also that must have been in the sweetspot of couple of month between the release of the bike and the bankruptcy, who else would want to transport a "dead" bike that far?

• by yapyap on 4/23/25, 9:46 AM

  1. The [1] in the blogpost leads nowhere.

  2. > Someone risked life in prison for a measly $3.5/500円 light.

  Is the punishment really life in prison in Japan for stealing a bike light?

• by dmarinus on 4/23/25, 4:25 AM

  something more problematic of this smart bike is that it also requires an app to unlock.

  from what I read they used many (low quality) custom parts for this bike which aren't available anymore.