micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility

Hi,

I’m looking to get back into cycling after about a ten year break. I used to cycle everywhere but travel, injury and moving to the suburbs basically stopped me.

The main rides I’ll be doing:

36km (22mi) between my place and my girlfriends - little bit of road, mostly bike path, a little bit of gravel.  

8km (5mi) to JiuJitsu class - road/pavement/path.

With at least one loaded pannier, possibly two.

I’m 110kg (~242lb) with a fairly solid build, the steel frames are appealing.

I may do a little touring, I haven’t done it before but Australia has some great off road tour options. It might just be a nice idea that I never get around to. I like camping and being alone which is what appeals about touring.

Being in Australia, I’m pretty limited on what bikes are actually available.

I was recommended the Kona Sutra LTD ($4k) (by a sales guy) but I feel that the wide tires aren’t a great choice for the commuting and it’s a bit more than I was planning to spend. I don’t mind spending more on getting the right bike for me but I’m also pretty frugal so would prefer to spend less if I can find the right bike for less.

I’ve also been considering the Marin Nicasio plus ($1.3K), Nicasio 2 ($2.2k), Surly Preamble ($2.9k), Salsa Cutthroat ($4.9k) or maybe a Bombtrack Hook ($3.6k).

Plus about $1000 for fenders, racks and a big fat lock to lock it up.

Thanks for any input.

There's a certain turn I make regularly, where I need to merge into a traffic lane to turn left on a moderately-trafficked road. I always feel like I don't get a good awareness of cars coming from behind by turning my head. I realized: I should have a mirror! Not just for that turn, but for safety generally. But what kind? I tried three: a bar-end, a bar-mount, and a glasses-mount. I thought I'd share my impressions.

(What actually happened is I liked the first mirror that I got, but my son snagged it. So I thought I'd try a different kind, but I didn't like that one. So all in all, three mirrors.)

The mirrors:

• the bar-end: a Mirrycle Mirror - $25
• the bar-mount: I got one that wasn't labeled for retail; but I'm pretty sure it's the same thing as this Cosmoing Anti-Glare Handlebar Mirror - $20
• the glasses / helmet mount: Take A Look Active Original Mirror - $22

The post picture shows the first two mirrors. Here is the Take A Look Active:

Field of View

The easiest factor to assess objectively is field-of-view (FOV). So I'll start there. There are three factors that affect FOV:

• mirror size (bigger means you see more)
• curvature (convex mirrors make objects appear more distant, but you see more)
• distance from your eye to the mirror (closer means you see more)

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Mirrycle (the round one), and the (likely white-label) Cosmoing (the one that gives motorcycle vibes):

The Mirrycle has greater curvature, but the Cosmoing is bigger and closer, so you can see more.

I also managed to get a photo of the Take A Look that gives a fair representation of its FOV. (The white Jeep is parked slightly closer in this photo.)

The Take A Look is flat, and very small. It has the smallest FOV of the three, despite being much closer to my face. But it's easier to use small head movements to see different angles. More on that in a bit.

(While shopping I saw that there a couple of Etsy shops with glasses-mounted mirrors inside bottle caps, such as the Beer View Mirror. Those are tempting. AFAICT they also use flat mirrors, and look a little smaller than Take A Look. So the FOV is probably a little smaller.)

Viewing Angle

The Mirrycle sticks out the furthest from the bike, which gives it the best position for getting an angle to see directly behind you. The closer in the mirror, the more of the rear view is blocked by your body.

Even with the telescoping arm fully extended, the Cosmoing doesn't get out as far as the Mirrycle since it's reaching over my grip, brake lever, and motor controller. If I had been more committed I could have swapped positions of the mirror and motor controller to get another couple of inches. Maybe that would get it into a position to match the Mirrycle. I'm not sure.

The Take A Look is so close to my face that I have to angle it out quite a bit to get to a point where I'm not just looking at my ear. I generally have to tilt my head a little to compensate to see behind me.

Vibration

Any bumps can vibrate the mirrors in a way that makes them more difficult to see in.

The Mirrycle is great in this respect - it's steady even on a somewhat bumpy road. Probably because it clamps inside the bar very tightly.

The Cosmoing was terrible about vibrations in my testing. But that might be partly my fault. There is a spring inside the mounting arm that is probably intended to absorb vibrations, and I think I over-tightened the bolt on that connection. I didn't think to try a different adjustment until after I'd returned the mirror. I'm sorry; I'm not the best reviewer!

The Take A Look is quite good. I'm not sure it's as vibration-resistant as the Mirrycle, but vibrations don't bother me nearly as much as they did with the Cosmoing.

Installation

The Mirrycle inserts in the the end of a handlebar, and comes with a wedge that presses inside the bar via tension from a bolt that you adjust. It's very secure, and pretty easy to install. You need grips that are open on the end. Usually lock-on grips come with plugs that you can pop out, which will work nicely. If you have slide-on grips it's usually easy to cut the end, since it's just rubber. I've heard you can thwack the end with a mallet to make the handlebar punch through the grip. My son snagged this mirror, (he rides to school every day, he needs it more) but although he had Bontrager lock-on grips, they had closed ends that I found to be quite resistant to cutting. That turned into an excuse to give him the grips from my e-bike that I don't love, and to get Ergon grips for myself.

When I tested the Mirrycle on my e-bike I ran into a problem where the wedge hit a bump where the wire for my motor controller is routed through a hole to run inside the handlebar. Fortunately the Mirrycle comes with a smaller-sized wedge for narrower handlebars, and that wedge fit fine.

The Cosmoing clamps onto a handlebar simply enough. The product description indicates there is a joint right next to the clamp that rotates 360°. That's misleading: you have to entirely remove the bolt that runs through that joint to rotate it, and there is a spline that allows rotating in increments. That's the same connection that holds the spring that I mentioned.

The Take A Look has three rubberized legs that slide onto alternate sides of the temple of a pair of glasses. It can attach to a helmet with an adapter, which I didn't try. I always ride with a pair of basic safety glasses anyway, so attaching to those was convenient for me. It takes some slightly fiddly wire bending to set everything up the first time. Once it's set up it's quite secure while riding. It's pretty easy for me to take on and off the glasses, and to adjust. I do spend more time adjusting this mirror than the bicycle-mounted mirrors.

Trade-offs

The Cosmoing has the best FOV, and is the least goofy-looking option. But I was disappointed by the vibrations. Plus the shop charged me $40, which seemed like too much for what I found when I opened the box. That probably soured my impression. If proper spring adjustment really eliminates vibrations then I might be selling this one short.

The Mirrycle is the most stable, with the second-best FOV. It sticks out the farthest from the bike for the best viewing angle. It's the most difficult to remove or get out of the way if you want to do something like put your bike in a bike locker. (The Cosmoing mirror attachment rotates pretty easily, so you can rotate it out of the way.)

Edit: The Mirrycle can be adjusted on the go in all axes. The Cosmoing is more difficult to adjust on the Y-axis because the 360° joint for that axis requires removing a bolt. And putting that bolt back in is pretty difficult due to the spring that the bolt compresses.

The bike-mounted mirrors have much wider FOV than the glasses-mounted mirrors. But it's more difficult to move around to see different angles. If you happen to be turning the mirror won't be pointed in the right direction, which can make it temporarily unusable.

With the Take A Look I can use small head movements to see any angle I want, and this gets easier with practice. But I do have to tilt my head a little to get my ear out of the way, so I don't have much of a passive view of cars coming from behind.

I can easily use one Take A Look mirror with multiple bikes. During my testing I used a bike share service, and I rode my son's bike to the shop for service. I had my mirror with me both times.

My Impressions

I think the Mirrycle would give me the best chance of noticing a car coming from behind.

I think the Take A Look is the most flexible in terms of my ability to see where I want to see, and for use with multiple bikes.

I ended up settling on the Take A Look. I've been using it for about a month. That's given me time to get used to moving my head to see everything, quickly adjusting it when I put it on, and transporting it while I'm off the bike. It does get me the weirdest looks. Even the younger bike enthusiasts I've been hanging out with have to ask because they don't know what it is. And then I had one guy inform me that I can also look over my shoulder. But I can see behind me, and that's what matters!

BART trains have these spots for bikes, with adjustable straps to hold bikes upright. But with a strap or two secured the bike still rolls back and forth as the train moves, which lets it knock into things.

The way to prevent rolling is to hold down a brake lever. You can do that with a large velcro strap, or your hand. But if you don't have a strap, and you want to sit down, you can wrap your helmet straps the handle, and connect the buckle. If needed you can twist the straps to make them shorter. You don't have to press the lever all the way down, just enough to stop the wheel from rolling.

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/210427

Once upon a time, they told us we wouldn’t download a car, and they were wrong. Later, Zero Motorcycles stated in their FAQ that you cannot hack an electric motorcycle, a statement which [Persephone Karnstein] and collaborator [Mitchell Marasch] evidently took issue with. Not only can you hack an electric motorcycle, it is — in [Persephone]’s words — a security nightmare.

You should absolutely go over to [Persephone]’s website and check out the whole write-up, which is adapted from a talk given at BSides Seattle 2026. There’s simply way more detail than we can get into here. Everything from “what horridly toxic solvents would I need to unpot this PCB?” to the scripts used in de-compiling and understanding code, it’s all there, and in a lively and readable style to boot. Even if you have no interest in security, or electric motorcycles, you should check it out.

The upshot is that not only were Zero Motorcycles wrong when they said their electric motorcycles could not be hacked, they were hilariously wrong. The problem isn’t the motorcycle alone: it has an app that talks to the electronics on the bike, which take over-the-air (OTA) updates. What about the code linked to the VIN alluded to in that screenshot? Well, it turns out you just need a code structured like a VIN, not an actual number. Oops. By the end of it, [Persephone] and [Mitchell] have taken absolute control of the bike’s firmware, an so have them full control over all its systems.

Why cut the brake lines when you can perform an OTA update that will do the same thing invisibly? And don’t think you can just reset the bike to factory settings to fix it: they thought of this, and the purely-conceptual, never-deployed malware has enough access to prevent that. Or they could just set the battery on fire. That was an option, too, because the battery management system gets OTA updates as well.

To be clear, we don’t have any problem with a motorcycle that’s dependent on electronics to operate. After all, we’ve seen many projects that would meet that definition over the years. But the difference is none of those projects fumbled the execution this badly. Even this 3 kW unicycle, which has a computer for balance control, doesn’t see the need to expose itself. It’s horribly unsafe in very different ways.

From Blog – Hackaday via this RSS feed

Spend enough time in the e-bike world, and you’ll start to notice something strange: a huge amount of how we...

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/43851522

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/57244645