BugBlog

Hello,

as some of you already know: I bought a hackable bike.

It’s a very nice batavus intermezzo easy deluxe.Just to answer the questions why I bought this device:

I’m about to get my drivers license (yes I still have fail a test, and maybe some day pass one), but since I’m getting older I do need to keep myself a bit healthy and riding a bike everyday is a good way to do that. However since I also have to work I can’t afford it to normally bike an average workday for a very long period of time (for instance to visit hack42). And I just like cycling.

I had some wishes for the bike which turned out to be a bit funny while buying:

• It has to be closed almost everywhere (brakes, gears,…. I don’t like sand in my bike, and I even more hate it to clean it) Question from the salesman: Where the hell do you drive?
• It has to have a detachable battery. Salesman: The fixed ones you can get out in the winter and store inside. I guess he didn’t have any idea that I also drive in the winter and than I do really like help.
• It has to have a detachable battery: Operation is not recommended when freezing, and charging is even worse when freezing. If you run on full power in the winter it can keep itself warm in some way.
• It has to have a full set of gears (7 or 8). I’m just so spoiled and used to it
• The motor shouldn’t interfere when off. It sucks when I have an empty battery and I have disadvantages from the motor
• It has to look like a normal bike
• It should be stable

This really long wishlist led to only 1 acceptable bike. Do they really only sell it to people who drive it in the weekends?

The first good impressions:

• You don’t have to input your own power, just turing the pedals around without putting force on them is enought to run 25km/h
• It’s a very stable bike
• The battery is easy
• It can do 80km’s easy

The first bad impressions:

1. You need a piece of ducktape in the dark. Someone put 8 bright blue leds on the display to inform you about the battery status which are shining directly into your eyes when driving in the dark woods
2. The battery status (again?) has 8 independent leds who should show you the status of the battery, however since the battery is 26.6 volt and the system is made for 24 volt you can only guess how hard it sucks to see only your last 10% of battery go empty and for the rest of the time it looks really fine. The is a major sucking feature. Time for some resistor somewhere in the system.
3. It’s almost impossible to order spare parts online. Fix this please
4. You have recalibrate the computer to the power output it delivers by driving under 25. Which does suck if you drive pretty fast and start driving some hill or bridge because it doesn’t increase the power output. On the other hand when driving up some hill with maximum power and you keep turning the pedals it keeps delivering maximum power output downwards, which can be pretty scary the first time.
5. the motor kicks in very late, which means that at street crossings you almost crossed the street before it kicks in. Of course there is a hack for this by driving in very low gear it starts earlier.
6. The front light only shines about 5 meter upfront, this is very annoying and not very easy to fix. You have to drive very slow trough the woods after a storm because you can’t see a damn thing (did I mention the blue leds already?)

In mean time I probably will ‘fix’ some of the issues, if I can order a spare display I can change the leds to some other color (red would be good, since this doesn’t blind that much)

Buyers advise for now: If you don’t have a very good reason to buy it, wait some years or be a hacker.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 11:13 am and is filed under Hacking, Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.