Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

abolish.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 145 posts

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#111

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #15
samtho wrote: post #12

This would be hilariously satirical if it were not true and it highlights much of what is wrong with tech. A benture capital subsidized micro mobility startup pulls out of a major city ostensibly because threshold for potential profit has been crossed and they’ve determined they cannot adjust their pricing to get the right numbers on their spreadsheet (note: this likely part of the reason why so many of these compani…

> After the presumably thousands of hours of labor that went into designing this, they went with a consumer grade, off the shelf product for an application that would have required a fraction of the power it was capable of? Driving the 3-phase motor yes, that can (and is usually) done with a dedicated real-time MCU/ASIC. But the interface with the backend, the actual brains? You need to deal with GPS, authentication…

Even then a RPi Zero should have been more than enough to handle the things you listed I'd think? An RPi 4 seems like not just overkill but ridiculous overkill.

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#112

Post by znpy »

samtho wrote: post #12

This would be hilariously satirical if it were not true and it highlights much of what is wrong with tech. A benture capital subsidized micro mobility startup pulls out of a major city ostensibly because threshold for potential profit has been crossed and they’ve determined they cannot adjust their pricing to get the right numbers on their spreadsheet (note: this likely part of the reason why so many of these compani…

> they find a raspberry pi, an SBC created for educational and hobby purposes but has been infamously out of stock because

Because making a lot of money is more satisfying than supporting education and hobbyists. —- ftfy

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#113

Post by slim »

superdisk wrote: post #51
notatoad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

developing for esp32 is way more difficult than developing for raspi. raspi lets you basically treat it like a normal computer, you can use standard python and sqlite and install whatever nonsense you want from pip and basically assume it will run whatever your laptop can. it means you can hire kids straight out of school, or outsource to india, and whoever you get can work on it without really any concern - it'll ru…

Problem: We need to outsource the software to India. Solution: Put a way overpowered computer in the product so they can program it. Ridiculous problem with a ridiculous solution. Are they allergic to any level of correctness? Sometimes I'm ashamed to be in this industry.

you can outsource esp32 developement to india just fine. the fact that someone decides to use overpowered hardware so he can develop crapware is independent of where the crapware is developed

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#114

Post by mschuster91 »

majormajor wrote: post #39
post-it wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 20 kg scooter, of course it's easy to steal.

A halfway-competent operation management team would see that as a reason to make the hardware harder to repurpose, not easier. Big organized operations can figure shit out, but put some barriers in front of the script-kiddie/homeless-dude contingent. A me-too copycat startup like Spin who got kicked out of Seattle a year ago ( https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2022/05/13/city-announces-ne... ) doing it this way doesn't…

> A halfway-competent operation management team would see that as a reason to make the hardware harder to repurpose, not easier.

Given that it's a routine sport in many cities, particularly those with bodies of water, to damage or destroy the scooters, it's imperative to make them as cheap as possible and as easy to repair as possible. Both conflict with stuff like custom boards or barriers to opening them up.

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#115

Post by Avamander »

robbywashere_ wrote: post #54

incoming flame war about how the raspi 4 was overpowered and they should have just used a button sized 8052, written the software in assembly and ran it all on CR3032 battery.

it's an absolutely valid point though

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#116

Post by Avamander »

5ADBEEF wrote: post #91
brendamn wrote: post #21

Is there a hardware platform better suited for these types of use cases? Not that long ago it seemed the tradeoff was either use a cheap but unreliable hobby platform (RPi or Arduino), or a stable but expensive (and usually somewhat custom) platform that involves picking the right components, board design, etc. Espressif sounds like they might be filling this gap, but it’s been a long time since I’ve looked seriously…

ESP-32 or Nordic. Nordic has Wi-Fi and cellular now. Would assume most people would use a Quectel module + Nordic/ESP32 for this.

Nordic also has a cellular module. So you could do it all with a single chip.

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#117

Post by [deleted] »

monksy wrote: post #82
simfree wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBikes certainly aren't classed as vehicles in the US, and no one cares when they are stolen. Given how little prosecution there is around bike theft, I doubt any police department or prosecutor is interested in spending the resources to prosecute the theft of an even cheaper mobility device.

They're classified as vehicles. Bikes themselves are also classified as vehicles and belong on the road

[deleted]

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#118

Post by dole »

fnord77 wrote: post #41

any tips on cracking the outer shell?

A thin step drill bit.

I think this might have been an early dev security unit because all of the ones I saw had a much smaller single pcb and iirc was a third party all-in-one board or custom board sourced later. Also, this looks like an ES2 and Spin switched to ESMaxes early on.

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#119

Post by fellowmartian »

internetter wrote: post #67
fellowmartian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing wrong with this, RPi is a great platform for hardware startups because it’s one of the very few platforms with a good, well-documented Linux distro, a million HATs for easy prototyping, and a community to help you out. It was never meant just for education and hobbyists, Raspberry Pi Foundation absolutely supports the commercial use case, and their newer products like CM4 even more so. I’d wager you n…

> I’d wager you never tried to launch an embedded Linux-powered product I'd wager most people go with a RTOS

You’d only do that if you absolutely have to, eg when you’re very constrained by battery or you do actually need real time guarantees. Getting a device with Wi-Fi, BLE, GPS, logging, camera, etc working on a RTOS is just unreasonably complicated when you have a huge battery and 2W power consumption of the SBC is dwarfed by a kilowatt motor.

Re: E-scooter startup Spin apparently uses RasPi 4s inside their scooters

#120

Post by BasedAnon »

Avamander wrote: post #115
robbywashere_ wrote: post #54

incoming flame war about how the raspi 4 was overpowered and they should have just used a button sized 8052, written the software in assembly and ran it all on CR3032 battery.

it's an absolutely valid point though

aside from how high the labor cost for that would be
Post reply on HN