I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrtVGimBYs

by alexis-d • 1 month ago

201 104 1 month ago

himata41133• 1 month ago

A bit of a tangent, but I hate the way this channel uses AI. There's moments where the creator doesn't really know what they're talking about so they ask AI which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, I don't mind it! However, the way it's repeated verbatim mimicing the speech style of the creator is so offputting I don't really know how to describe it, sounds like someone trying to speak a language they don't know is the best way I can describe it. Might just be me though.

edit:

Actually the comment the creator left on the video is almost purely AI and is just as yuicky to read: "There are lots of questions about runaway Reevo mode, and it's a fun topic. Let's go deeper. First of all, I did add a "PAS Timeout" that turns off PAS after a few minutes, and is selectable in the menu. If you set this up from my Github repo, that feature is active. A lot of you also suggested a weight sensor on the seat, but that would disable pedal assist if you stood up out of the saddle, which is when you would need it most. Another suggestion was the dead man switch. That one would work! This is all fun to think about, so keep the ideas coming. I just MIGHT get another Reevo for myself."

_def• 1 month ago

Maybe the trick is to own it - are AI vtubers already a thing?

Forgeties79• 1 month ago

I can’t imagine having such a functional view of “consuming content” in my life that I’d ever want to watch that.

jowsie• 1 month ago

Neuro-sama has been a thing for quite a while, and is much more interesting than ChatGPT in a waifu suit. https://youtube.com/channel/UCLHmLrj4pHHg3-iBJn_CqxA

wolttam• 1 month ago

If you know Seth you know he kind of talks like that comment reads, and has for quite a while

himata41133• 1 month ago

As a very very very long time viewer I've only noticed this in last 10 videos where there's verbatim reads like this from time to time. Ironically where you can notice this the most is the same kind of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPe3cY3oeu4

ehnto• 1 month ago

I've been watching Seth for years, that comment is pretty in line with his writing style. I expect he's using AI, but I don't think he would be lazy with it. I would expect him to prefer not replying at all over using AI to reply.

ak217• 1 month ago

You don't know much about Seth do you? That's not "AI", it's called a script.

himata41133• 1 month ago

I've seen a pretty big percentage of his videos, dropped off past few years or so, but the writing style is heavily influenced by AI in some parts of the script. It might sound like Seth, but AI cannot replicate it perfectly and it just sounds very off.

caconym_• 1 month ago

This comment doesn't seem obviously AI-written to me.

red75prime• 1 month ago

It seems to be Claude that was doing the majority of the work on the software, so I find it appropriate that Claude responses (as in Claude-in-a-harness-with-the-task-context-available responses) were passed through. Attribution should be clear though.

jasonkester• 1 month ago

If you're not familiar with this channel, do yourself a favor and watch your way through his backyard trail build videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsuk8OndHs&list=PL5S7V5NhM8...

They're so well done. Sadly, he doesn't do them anymore because Youtube's algorithm doesn't make it worth his while. Evidently, he gets the same traffic & revenue from a 10 minute video reviewing "stupid bike gadgets" into the camera as he does for spending a month building a cool bike jump and editing together one of those amazing videos on the playlist.

If youtube rewarded evergreen stuff like that instead of cheap "reaction" videos, it'd be a much cooler place.

freetime27• 1 month ago

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them.

I watch photography videos on YouTube, and camera review channels consistently have far more subscribers than channels who make content about taking photos. (Or at least they did in the past - in recent years camera tech has really matured and interesting releases are much less frequent, and reviewers seem to have taken a hit).

I think people just like gear. Should YouTube not show people what they like to see?

I've watched some Berm Peak videos in the past and I mostly know the channel for its videos about builds/repairs, or his video about the history of valves. The mountain biking videos are good too, but only hold my interest for so long. If I want to see mountain biking I'm more likely to look at some of the stuff Red Bull is putting out.

mulmen• 1 month ago

Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences?

I didn’t read the rest of your comment but it’s the fault of the algorithm because that tail wags the dog. It’s physically impossible to watch all videos so we are all at the mercy of the (a) algorithm.

jonplackett4• 1 month ago

I’m gonna say it’s YouTube. They are obsessed with pushing short form shit videos to me despite me never wanting to watch them. I hate YouTube shorts so much

close04• 1 month ago

I think it's the algorithm. Occasionally I get recommended videos that are 5-8+ years old (so old in terms of Youtube years) with no new comments so presumably not getting a lot of recent views. But soon comes a wave of fresh comments wondering why they never discovered this video before. So the algorithm starts the cycle, not the organic user preferences.

For this particular channel, I watched a bunch of his videos on this Reevo bike In January 2025, and a lot of bike/cycling related videos in general. Despite this clear preference to guide the algorithm, Youtube stopped recommending this channel to me. It disappeared from my feed.

I always suspected Youtube "motivates" creators to pay for promotion by giving them a taste for free, how it looks like to be on everyone's feed, and then takes them off.

anukin• 1 month ago

Do you have some recommendations for photography channels on YouTube?

atoav• 1 month ago

As a young film student my Prof asked me whether I wanted to go to a talk to which he was invited. It was on the genres shown in German public television.

There the summary of the discussion was: Our core demographic are 60 to 70 year olds which is why we only make shows that appeal to 60-70 year olds and our core audience watches TV while doing household chores, so it needs to be simple to follow, so they can do household chores while watching.

I told them that to me this sounds a lot like circular logic, where they justify the things they are doing with the outcomes that produced. It is obvious there are other markets targeting different audiences (e.g. the likes of Netflix have been explicitly mentioned) and these markets are growing based on the way demographics shift.

A bit like a drug dealer that says he can't do honest work since all his customers are drug addicts, they are using the status quo as an excuse to persist the status quo.

The real way to think about these things is to consider them feedback loops. If all your content targets a specific demographic of course you're gonna have more audience members of that demographic, which again leads you to make more content for said demographic, which leads to more audience members of that demographic which... Until you hit some systemic limit, e.g. you have saturated the market or it turns out your content isn't that appealing to begin with in comparison to other stuff.

That means if you want to be strategic about this you need to give incentives to creators to produce stuff for audiences you don't already have. Even better: you need to become a partner these creators can and want to trust in.

These are the levers YouTube needs to pull if they want to stay a relevant platform that people enjoy spending their time on.

pjc50• 1 month ago

show people what they like to see?

The thing is, "what people enjoy while watching", "what they derive lasting benefit, memory or happiness from", and "what they click on in a thumbnail" are three different things, and youtube optimizes for the latter. Which is why youtube face is a thing.

2muchcoffeeman• 1 month ago

* Is it the YouTube algorithm's fault? Or viewer preferences? I think YouTube would be happy to recommend the videos to more people if more people watched them.*

I always got garbage even if it suggested things I wanted to watch too.

The best way is to disable suggestions completely and then just make a note of your favourite channels. That way you get a completely blank landing page and are forced to search out exactly what you want every time.

smallerize2• 1 month ago

He actually just did a video about that. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_PdRRfoBXo&pp=ygUJQmVybSBwZWF... It includes a recap of the last several years of content and how he was trying to keep his audience, sometimes by doing really risky things.

ryandrake• 1 month ago

A huge percentage of people who say they are into a particular hobby are really just collectors of that hobby’s gear. Photography is an easy example, but this applies to a LOT of hobbies.

tripdout• 1 month ago

I remember seeing a video where someone was talking about how from someone on the YouTube team said that their goal is for you to to replace the word “algorithm” with “audience”.

Whether they achieve that goal or not is a different story.

RankingMember• 1 month ago

Coincidentally he just made a video elaborating on this as well as a general overview of the history and state of mountain biking channels on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/_oQ4XY4P1n8

Escapade5160• 1 month ago

It's in YouTube's best interest to only show users content they're interested in. Replace the word algorithm with users and you'll have a more accurate representation of how YouTube actually works. The reason those videos didn't get the love they deserved is because they're niche content, the 10 minute review videos appeal to a wider audience and therefore gain more traction.

Gigachad• 1 month ago

Youtube seems to regularly suggest old videos to me so I think it's less a problem with evergreen content and more that youtube pays for minutes watched so someone who does cheap reaction content can produce more minutes to watch than someone who spends a long time on one video.

rob742• 1 month ago

I only saw his previous video on the Reevo that he now fixed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPe3cY3oeu4 - just in case YouTube doesn't list it under suggested videos when you watch this one) and it was hilarious.

Xylakant• 1 month ago

Or pay for a nebula subscription and watch there.

ramgine• 1 month ago

I’ve been a fan of his for years (have stickers and a hoodie for berm peak). In the past couple years I stopped watching his channel because he stopped trail building. His new stuff is for entry level people and I’m sure it gets tons of traffic, but watching him make use of his old back yard and his new one was inspiring and fun.

4ndr3vv• 1 month ago

He put a video up about this a couple of weeks ago, and rather than YouTube's algorithm being to blame, it was more him struggling to keep up with his audiences constant demand for more progress with more super sketchy features that he was basicly building constantly.

"the Algoirithm" often gets sited, but it's often a youtuber's interaction with thier audience, the pressure to keep up with demand, rising success and not wanting to miss out.

lokar• 1 month ago

Do they give you the data to know? I assumed he meant that impressions had gone way down so people are not even seeing it (and why everyone begs you to subscribe and hit the bell). Of course impressions could be restricted because people stop watching after 20 seconds.

ivanjermakov• 1 month ago

In case you want more trail building from Berm Peak:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5S7V5NhM8JSm7EK8IYTS...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5S7V5NhM8JRuAMsVEQ_3...

Nevermark• 1 month ago

I have a red one and a blue one. In storage at the moment.

I guess I won't be riding them anytime soon. But I am glad to know there is a way to resurrect/improve them!

bdamm3• 1 month ago

If anything this video is kicking off a storm of amateur hacking enthusiasm for these wild bikes. Do us all a favor and sell yours!

nrabulinski4• 1 month ago

I hate how he’s doing the kind of project a ton of people would like to help with, for free and on their own time, yet he’s making an LLM do all the interesting work. He can’t code so he vibecodes the whole frontend. He can’t reverse engineer so he leaves Claude with the uart connection. He doesn’t understand something so he makes an LLM explain it.

With his platform he could easily find a person (or a couple) who could do this work themselves, not only saving him money, but nerdsniping someone into hacking a bike. A win-win for everybody.

globular-toast• 1 month ago

Yep, we're becoming further and further apart by the day.

fnands• 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure if he did that someone would complain that he is using people as free labour to increase his youtube revenues.

It's impossible to do anything on the internet without someone in the peanut gallery telling you you are doing something wrong.

antran223• 1 month ago

Imagine after mowing your own lawn with a petrol-powered lawnmower, you got some shades from the neighbors for "Robbing the kids in the community a chance for some honest labor. If you don't know how to use the gardening shear, ask the kids to do it instead of using the automatic lawnmower. Would be a win-win for everybody".

nrabulinski4• 1 month ago

Except with an automatic lawnmower you’re still doing the work yourself. In the video he literally said he left Claude overnight. He did no reverse engineering and no coding

nickserv• 1 month ago

It shows that you don't need to know how to code to succeed in this type of project.

As someone who does know how to code, I find the approach to be great, as it can motivate others to try similar projects.

alistairSH• 1 month ago

Throwing shade at somebody for doing a project with the tools they had at hand is so weird.

This sort of thing exactly aligned with the promise of AI (and every "automation advancement" since the dawn of time)! It's another layer of abstraction that allows less technical people to do the thing.

atsuzaki• 1 month ago

He used to be a web developer before doing youtube fulltime, so "he can’t code" is a false premise.

nrabulinski4• 1 month ago

This is what he said though. I don’t doubt he could code if he put his mind to it, but in the video he shows the code that’s talking to the bike, displaying stuff, etc, and says it’s all AI generated because it’s outside his area of expertise.

WarmWash2• 1 month ago

Imagine using a high level language with a mountain of libraries to stitch code blocks together with stack overflow glue, rather than write the project in assembly, fully understand what is going on, and get a much lighter and robust application like a True Programmer™.

nrabulinski4• 1 month ago

You’re either making a bad-faith argument on purpose, or on accident. What you’re saying is false equivalence. Leaving Claude overnight is in no universe comparable to getting some code running yourself, even if that code is 5 lines of python, with a bunch of libraries doing all the heavy lifting

utopiah4• 1 month ago

I don't have that model but I can very confidently say :

- do NOT buy an e-bike with custom parts, no matter how "cool" it is!

I bought a CowBoy years ago and honestly, it was great. Until it wasn't. Inexorably, it does not matter how good the parts are, how well designed it is, wear and tear WILL create problems. You WILL need to replace parts. If nobody but the company making the bike sell them you will get in trouble. It's the same with the App, if it's not open source relying on standard AND with existing, not upcoming, GadgetBrige support they will stop supporting your bike and brick it.

Please, pretty please, as consumers who expect to keep on maintaining your bike over years, ASK your repair shop what THEY think is a good bike to fix. Not what is a good bike to ride.

PS: I now ride a Fixie because screw CowBoy and all those e-bike startups who believe they are the new Apple. They aren't and I was the one paying for their delusion.

DANmode2• 1 month ago

I now ride a Fixie

With a conversion kit? ^_^

thenthenthen• 1 month ago

When building my bikes I quickly found out that are no standard parts.

utopiah4• 1 month ago

Ooph... I didn't even consider that! First because I didn't really want to give up on the CowBoy (I did have few problems with it after a while but manage to somehow gradually get it back, kinda, but honestly as I said, not worth it) but mostly because it's damn heavy. It's perfectly fine for an e-bike but even without the battery it's a bit of a tank.

So no, I bought an entry level single speed where you can flip the back wheel as fixed gear or just free wheel. I wasn't sure I would stick to Fixie... but it's been months now and I don't remember ever considered going back.

PS: this model https://www.decathlon.be/fr/p/velo-ville-single-speed-500-gr... for ~275€

freetime27• 1 month ago

I have been riding a Panasonic "Gyutto" [1] for about 10 years. I bought it when I had young kids, as it's designed to hold two child seats (one on the back, and one on the handle bars). Now that they've grown up I've replaced the child seats with baskets and use it for commuting every day and grocery shopping.

The thing is an absolute tank - the only parts I've had replace are the tires and brake pads. And the design is really simple with all of the consumable parts being easy to replace. At about $1,400 USD, it's not cheap, but I'm shocked at how long it's lasted and how little maintanence it's needed.

Definitely not "cool" - but one of the best purchases I've ever made.

1. https://cycle.panasonic.com/products/gyutto_croomr_ex/

frantathefranta• 1 month ago

Pretty sure at $1,400 it's cheaper than most worthwhile eBikes on the market.

asimovDev4• 1 month ago

so it's been riding on the same battery for 10 years? That's a great lifespan

jjice• 1 month ago

I think it's a generally good place to start when buying anything, especially anything of high value. You want to be able to truly own it, which includes maintaining and repairing it.

Now of course there are areas you can make trade offs. A lot of people like MacBooks despite them not supporting other operating systems very well and Apple still mostly being hardasses about outside repair, but they come with good performance and battery life.

Making sure to keep maintainability in mind when making a product decision is critical to making an informed purchase.

asimovDev4• 1 month ago

app is a big point. i was apalled by the fact that the app for the bike (in the video) could no longer connect / authenticate with the bike

i have a e-scooter and judging by the decompiled code it's some sort of chinese e-scooter reskinned by a european company. I know the app is not going to be around for long, so I slowly been trying to make my own.

uproarchat2• 1 month ago

PS: I now ride a Fixie

Fixies are the way to go. Less parts, less things to break. Very Unix-y.

kjkjadksj3• 1 month ago

All the fixie bros say this but my road bike takes basically no maintenance at all. Even when it does, adjusting the derailleurs is a 5 second task with a small Phillips head. Relubing the chain takes 2 minutes. Brakes only needed adjusting when the brake lines were brand new and still stretching and this was also maybe a 30 second task. Rest of maintenance you’d have to do like bb, repacking hub or steerer grease, etc, you’d have to do with a fixie too.

I’ll take my mechanical advantage with gearing.

antran223• 1 month ago

Absolutely insane how people could have bought a bicycle that will become (partially) useless if they don't connect it with a mobile app. Even if this bike have the build quality of a spaceship I wouldn't even touch it with a stick.

Kudos to Seth for cracking the control on the bike, just so we can reclaim control of an appliance that we paid for with our own money, one that won't work because the maker can't be arsed enough to make it work without a mobile app.

Related: Cory Doctorow's [Unauthorized Bread](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...)

WesSouza• 1 month ago

Can anyone explain why in the world they would use an electroluminescent light instead of a simple LED?

kvdveer• 1 month ago

In the video you can see that the LED lights the logo less evenly than the EL lighting. While that's not important at all, this might be the reason behind this odd choice

asimovDev4• 1 month ago

someone in the comments theorized it was at first supposed to be a full-fledged front light but the design changed and they just used whatever hardware was already there to power the logo

malfist2• 1 month ago

You don't use EL as a "full fledged front light", they don't have the lumen output and need a lot of support (high voltage) to produce what they do.

shymasen• 1 month ago

ok AND

shrx• 1 month ago

I was disappointed that he did not actually fix the two biggest safety issues with the bike: the runaway triggering positive feedback loop when walking the bike, and the backward-extending kick stand.

BizarroLand2• 1 month ago

I would leave stuff like that to an engineer and not some dude that fiddles with bikes on youtube.

I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]

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