Unbricking a $2k bike with a $10 Raspberry Pi

&gt; A simple fix is to just use the previous power value if ever: the cadence is non-zero and the previous power is non-zero and the current power is zero. A slight improvement is to keep track of the slope and factor it in when calculating the predicted value.<p>Looks like somebody rediscovered the Kalman filter without realising it :)<p>I recall implementing one for an IoT device, to de-noise gas sensor readings a few years ago.<p>Pretty fun read. Makes me wish I could gather the courage and patience to get back into hacking on embedded stuff

That&#x27;s horrible that Peloton was able to do this. Maybe there&#x27;s more to the story, but it seems like the court allowed them to shut down a competitor for simply building a similar (relatively obvious) product?<p>In fact, the CEO of Peloton had the idea for Peloton... IN A FLYWHEEL CLASS. That&#x27;s insane.

It’s a shame that more exercise bikes don’t have open APIs. Zwift is an absolutely awesome way of keeping in shape if you like cycling, but the barrier to entry is that you need to own a bike and a bike trainer that are both pretty expensive. Maker projects like this one always make me happy, because it’s repurposing an old piece of equipment to function just as well as a new one. Next step would be adding smart controls to the resistance ;)

This is the reason I bought a Keiser bike instead of a Peloton, it has a simple display that works with Bluetooth sensors (I use my watch to record my sessions). I use the Peloton app in an iPad (I could pair the bike with the iPad app, but don&#x27;t).<p>The bikes are about the same price, but the Keiser screen is a simple LCD display that&#x27;s much cheaper to replace if it gets broken and is fully usuable without a subscription.<p>Plus, I think the bike looks better.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keiser.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keiser.com</a>

Products like this make me furious.<p>Selling a product whose interface&#x2F;API&#x2F;whatever is deliberately obfuscated so that the manufacturer also has a monopoly on a subscription service or an app for said product is blatantly anti-consumer, anti-competitive, anti-environment, and should be illegal.<p>Fuck Peloton. Fuck Flywheel. Fuck all the proprietary IoT companies.<p>And apparently fuck <i>me</i> for having the gall to want to control my air conditioner from my computer rather than GE Android app #12 that has God-knows-what baked in and that&#x27;s going to be abandoned in two years anyway.<p>Nobody should ever feel like they have to throw out an otherwise functional refrigerator-sized appliance because of software obsolescence.<p>I am absolutely willing to die on this hill. We need a GDPR-sized hammer to fix this.

Awesome project. I wish more smart devices offered a “run it locally on a Pi if you’re paranoid or a control freak.” I avoid IoT devices in general because I have no idea where the data is being stored, if it’s stored securely, or if it’s being sold. I prefer to manage this all myself.

Just wanted to plug repair.org who is working to protect actions like this (I have no connection to the org). You can join as an individual member to support their mission financially:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;repair.org&#x2F;individual-supporter-membership" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;repair.org&#x2F;individual-supporter-membership</a>

This is a great reverse engineering project.<p>What it points out to me, painfully, yet again, is that cool stuff can actually do everything its bought to do without a &quot;monthly service fee.&quot; And yet here we are.

It&#x27;s interesting to see the discussion here focusing mainly on &quot;open from the producer&#x2F;manufacturer&quot; side, when what I think is the really important point here is that &quot;<i>opening</i> from the consumer&#x2F;user&quot; side can be easy and empowering: companies and services will come and go, but your ability to take control effectively depends only on your willingness to discover and explore.<p>I avoid a lot of &quot;smart&quot; products in general, but feel comfortable with working on the equipment I do have --- whether it&#x27;s maintenance, repair, or modification --- and I think that&#x27;s the most important thing to keep in mind; to not be scared of treating things as anything other than mysterious black boxes. It seems that a lot of people treat &quot;reverse engineering&quot; as some equally mysterious and imposing idea, when it&#x27;s really just about problem solving or figuring out how something works.<p>Also, I don&#x27;t think the RPi is necessary here; the bike is a Bluetooth device, so any computer with a Bluetooth interface can receive its data and process it. I&#x27;m not an RF expert, but rebroadcasting BT seems like it would create more interference.

&gt; First, the node binary needs permission to advertise Bluetooth services:<p>&gt; sudo setcap cap_net_raw+eip &#x2F;usr&#x2F;local&#x2F;bin&#x2F;node<p>Use AmbientCapabilities= in the unit file instead.

Drat, I was hoping this would <i>also</i> have a recipe for unlocking&#x2F;reinitializing the attached Android-based tablet, on some of these bikes. Then it could run other biking apps - or just provide reading&#x2F;music while riding. (Maybe even: it could do the BLE translation?)<p>The community hasn&#x27;t figured out how to root the tablet, yet, but there are some hints as to the manufacturer&#x2F;boot-launch-software – <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;FlywheelAnywhere&#x2F;comments&#x2F;gexqte&#x2F;has_anyone_wiped_the_software_on_their_flywheel&#x2F;fq1wz19&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;FlywheelAnywhere&#x2F;comments&#x2F;gexqte&#x2F;ha...</a> – if anyone has any ideas or is interested in a challenge.

Was it really &quot;bricked&quot;

Reading into this - flywheel apparently stole patented ideas from peloton including streaming on demand exercise classes? And that&#x27;s why their service is shutting down? How is that supposed to be a protectable&#x2F;patentable concept? That sounds like some first class patent trolling at face value.

There are other machines, like rowing machines, for which an open solution is hard to incentivise, since the machine, the app, and the sensors will all come from a single vendor.<p>I&#x27;m a little surprised, however, that Peloton, and Peloton-alikes ever happened because cyclists have training devices with open interfaces: Bikes, mounted on smart trainers that have standardized wireless links and protocols, connected to a choice of apps.<p>All it takes is taking the rear wheel off a bike. Or not even that for the most basic trainers, which clamp the rear axle and provide resistance to the rear tire. A fascinating case of a market segmentation that is less susceptible to being breached than one might think.

If the bike doesn&#x27;t take you anywhere when you pedal it, it&#x27;s still a brick.

Some interesting info here. I have a Garmin speed sensor and a “dumb” mag trainer (CycleOps Mag). Given the trainers known resistance curve, I was thinking about trying to come up with a script to approximate power based on speed.<p>Basically I want a home brew alternative for Zwift and TrainerRoad virtual power.

Wow, I love expensive equipment that can’t work once the company goes out of business. If you want to have a subscription based hardware device the hardware should be free.

You left out step 3 on your ToDo list: 3) Spoof the data to the social media apps and make yourself into a super-human athlete!<p>(Probably best done with a different account.)

The 2k exercise bike aside, this is a brilliant article. I love reading stuff like this and wish I had the smarts&#x2F;knowledge to do this sort of thing.

This is the kind of article I love to see on HN. Someone had an issue with a product and solved it using clever technical skills and deep dives.

An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.<p>Mitch Hedberg

Imagine inventing the wheel and expecting that in the distant future, the wheel itself would stop working because of a stupid reason like this.

Why would a bicycle need a subscription service?

There are standard BLE GATT attributes for reporting power output, cadence, etc. from indoor bikes (and tons of other standards for other fitness appliances, smart scales, blood sugar measurement devices, etc.). If the vendor had used these standard attributes there won’t be any need for reverse engineering their protocol.<p>Moral of the story: choose appliances that support standard protocols.

I&#x27;m fairly open-minded, but sometimes a product comes along and blows me away with how preposterous its central pitch is.<p>And then I discover there is actually a market for it, and I am further dismayed... And amazed at the robustness of Say&#x27;s Law.<p>Anyway, this bike and the whole associated product is preposterous.

&gt; a $2k bike<p>Maybe that&#x27;s your problem right there. Get a simple bike, leave the house (ok, I know there&#x27;s Corona, I didn&#x27;t say congregate), find someplace planar, and cycle in the real world.<p>In Amsterdam, a decent used bike will cost you the equivalent of 80 USD, maybe less.