Making things talk: I want to hack my bicycle

E-Bikes are a great invention. Especially living in cities with lots of hills like San Francisco – or our Intuity home base Stuttgart, it is great to have a bike that helps us to stay relaxed on our way to the office.

Caring about user experience and perfectly balanced technology, the Bosch E-Bike is probably the best choice. Supporting you directly at the pedal – you really feel like wearing the yellow jersey. Wouldn’t it be great if…

• you would interact with such a Bike in a more subtile manner! Sweat sensors in your cloth that prevent you from doing to much when wearing a suit on your bike.
• you can drive the Col de la Madeleine (Rhône Alpes) without your heartbeat leaving a healthy range.
• you want to get fit and just simulate a training on the Col de la Madeleine on your local training course.

There are lots of things that might be “even more cool” depending on you lifestyle, fitness- or health level. That is why we think our E-Bikes should talk to us and vice versa! According to the Owners Manifesto “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” Julian and Kai started learning about the CAN-based conversation between the control unit and the motor of Steffen’s bike, figuring out the infos and commandos. Steffen plotted the adapter on a 3d printer. Here’s a quick video of a test setup where they’re sending data back to the bike…

Many thanks to Peter and our friends at ibbundpartner who gave us the breakthrough hints to manipulate the data on the HMI and the pedelecs drive unit.