Repair Cafe – Vanmoof S3 Dead Battery

At one of our Repair Cafes, we had an electrical bicycle that would not turn on because it had been sitting idle for three months and would not charge. Vanmoof has no repair options since they have gone bankrupt over the last few months and not supplying any spare parts.

With nothing to lose, we started to take the bicycle apart to find out what it’s made of and if it’s serviceable. With little or no documentation on how to take it apart and without specialised tools and security bits we cracked it open.

Issue 1: Unlock The Bicycle

The bicycle needed an app to unlock it, the bicycle would turn on for 1-2 seconds and then turn off. To solve this I used a generic 36v charger and plugged it in to get the smart cartridge to boot up. This allows you to unlock your bicycle and ride as a push bike.

Issue 2: Repairing The Battery – Manual Recharge

The bicycle was not holding any charge in the battery. The battery is located in the bottom rale. You need a specialised tool to remove the wheel however I found if you deflate the wheel and take out 2 bottom screws you can slide the battery out. There was no power coming out of either the charge ports or discharge ports. By connecting the DC benchtop power supply to discharge ports battery started to charge. Voltage when plugged in was 28v. I let it charge up to 36v and then put the battery back into the bicycle.

Conclusion:

The Vanmoof bicycle is back up and running and fully functional again. It was well worth the time.

Thanks to all TOG members who helped out with advice, I am in no way an expert on this.

This repair was carried out by Christian Kortenhorst.

Raspberry Pi outdoor Camera

The project is to create an outdoor stop motion camera that can be powered over one cable and we can connect to remotely to monitor building site.

  • Shopping list:
  • Raspberry Pi 3 or 3. I bought Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
  • MakerHawk Raspberry Pi Camera IR Fisheye Wide-angle 150-160 Degree 5MP OV5647 Webcam Automatically Switching between Day-Vision and Night-Vision Shooing Mode for Raspberry Pi 2B/ 2B+/3B/3B+/4B
  • Active PoE Splitter Adapter Power Over Ethernet 48V to 12V
  • POE switch 48V (already had)
  • 6.2″x3.5″x2.5″(158mmx90mmx64mm) ABS Junction Box Universal Project Enclosure w PC Transparent Cover
  • Nylon Cable Gland with Locknut
  • CAT5 cable (internal or external)
  • AmazonBasics Circular Polarizer Filter – 77 mm

Software we are running on on Pi is Raspberry and the image capture is imgcomp by Matthias-Wandel https://github.com/Matthias-Wandel/imgcomp (very easy and well documented how to setup)

Things left to do:
Mount camera on off stands so camera is closer to camera filter.
Setup backup fo images nightly to google drive (rclone) https://rclone.org/

Air compressor fixed

Air compressor in workshop died few week ago and finally getting around to taking it apart to see what issue is. Seamed like motor might have ceased however it was quick fix. 

Lasersaur fixed

First of all great to have community like Lasersaur after lots of cutting over last 3 weeks we started to have some issues with our Lasersaur we thought we had broken the focus lense however it just needed a good clean.

2016-07-19 20.15.042016-07-19 20.14.43

Even after this we where still not getting very far after suggestions fromĀ Fab Lab Limerick to make following extra long laser head and put cardboard at the end to focus.

Works a treat and made it much easier to focus, thanks FabLab and the community for getting our laser up and running again.