Title says most of it. Spin electric scooters exited the Seattle market and abandoned their scooters all over the city and apparently they have a pi 4 in them!
So that’s where all the damn Pi4s went.
Well, they sure as fuck didn’t go to the hobbyist market, we’ve been getting fucked by the rPi foundation for 3 years now.
I mean, the cold reality is that they developed and released a perfect piece of hardware for industrial automation and sold it for pennies in comparison to other industrial computer boards.
Industry will always have deeper pockets than hobbyists.
It’s far from industrial quality, but it still is getting used there. There’s a reason it’s a fraction of the cost of a proper PLC.
Yep, exactly.
If you can buy 10 Pis for the cost of one real PLC, and the only downtime you have if it fails is the time to swap the board and boot the machine back up it’s a no-brainer solution.
I’ve been seeing them everywhere.
Those self service terminal at autozone? Pi’s.
I haven’t seen one- what’s it do?
It’s not just that. If the Pi Foundation has to make a choice between fulfilling an order for 100 pis for a company so that the company can keep making products and meeting payroll vs. 100 hobbyists that want to make their own one-off project, which is the more moral use of resources?
Yeah, those companies should probably not have chosen a pi board to power their products but that’s only noticeable in hindsight.
But how am I supposed to run pi-hole and connect my Insteon fan to HomeKit?
It’s amazing to me that there isn’t anything comparable to a fanlinc or keypad linc. RIP in peace insteon
They also bent over backwards to help industrial buyers get them while flat out refusing to help content creators and Devs of open source projects that use the pi - it was really disappointing tbh
Still love them though but not as much as I used to.
Well, everyone wanting to buy anything with a proccessor in it, has been getting fucking these last 3 years
This is such a terrible application. These things would drain their battery just running the pi and electronics. Why such a high power platform for such basic functionality?
This screams of free money flooding startups. Amateur hour.
I’m not intimately familiar with the BCM2711 but I believe it’s a reasonable, albeit somewhat overpowered, processor for the application. It can be put into a variety of low power states and probably pulled out of sleep by various events like the GSM chip sending packets or accelerometer motion (frequently the peripheral chips have dedicated “wakeup” pins that you can wire to interrupts). It’s not the most cost effective option by far, there are sub $5 microcontrollers with multiple cores for handling communications and real time motor control concurrently but you’d need to hire someone like me for a few months @$200/hr to write the low level drivers and design the boards. The rpi lets random web-only devs fumble their way through hardware development using whatever GitHub Python libraries they can find. If you only need a hundred scooters it makes more sense to just yolo it and buy up the remaining supply of rpis to start your grift.
Great explanation. I’d be one of those web Devs.
But why not an ESP32 or something that’s really well supported but better matched to their use case? Rpi screams ‘I read an article on how to connect my leds to Wi-Fi once’ levels of competence.
But I suppose if it was a half baked grift of sorts then it checks out haha. Even if that grift was more of an egotistical and not intentionally sourced grift.
Yeah, that’s the issue ultimately. The ESP32 chips are nice and easy to use but still pale in comparison to getting things working on a pi for the average developer without embedded experience. These devs may not even know they exist to be completely honest.
I was working with a buddy on a “startup” that was more of a hobby than anything (and didn’t go anywhere). The early prototypes were controlled by Arduino and Pis early on – ease of software development was key as we experimented with and dialed in the hardware. The later prototypes used an ESP32 though, because we’re aren’t idiots.
I’m a hobbyist at best: it kills me that there are well paid “professional embedded software engineers” out there that can’t work with actual embedded hardware. All I could think of was this article on electrical engineers that can’t solder. The complete lack of real world, hands on experience with the hardware blows my mind.
Yup. This is really the worst part. I am a village idiot. So if i do it at home that’s fine.
But then again the shit I see at work sometimes…
putting prototypes straight into production is the “tech startup” way!
Surely the drive motors use far more energy than the computer, and the computer doesn’t need to be fully powered on all the time.
Yeah they do. The device current issue is one of time. If they coded it properly they could keep the pi asleep at almost all times, but seeing as they used one in the first place I have my doubts.
Essentially it would make the scooter drain from just sitting vs being able to sit for weeks until a rider hops on.
It’s a lot cheaper than getting an EE to design you a more efficient bespoke solution.
Could just buy an ESP32 board instead, at least that doesn’t suck down power and need to boot Linux to function.
They probably could have used a Pico, certainly a zero instead of a 4
This is what I mean. It’s not like they are running some kind of image processing or literally anything heavy.
Just seems way over the top. Also my bet is it they didn’t bother with bespoke hardware they probably didn’t do much to power optimize.
Oh so that’s why you can’t buy them anymore, people are using them as microcontrollers.
Pis are pretty commonly used in industrial automation use cases (production lines, robot arms, etc) too. They’re not the best thing for those use cases, but they’re far cheaper than anything else, and anyone with basic programming knowledge can get something running on them, rather than having to find someone experienced with embedded systems (usually in C or C++).
When there were major supply chain issues, a lot of the limited supply was going towards those use cases, as the companies using them had already placed large orders very far in advance.
It wasn’t just that they placed orders in advance. The pi foundation literally told people it was prioritizing those customers over anyone else. Kinda shitty IMO, considering the reason the pi was built in the first place.
I’m not well versed on the details surrounding this, but it sounds like Pi pivoted to supply businesses during the chip shortage, instead of direct to consumer in the more hobbyist space.
That seems like a win win, well within moral business practice.
Yes, Pi was founded (afaik) as a cheap minimalist PC. No thrills or bullshit, with a strong moral stance on making a barebones PC available to all.
Pivoting to help keep a global chip shortage from causing a global collapse of anything needing simple circuit boards isn’t evil. It’s helping everyone get through potentially a lot worse than not having access to a mostly hobbyist device. And it probably meant they could use their own impacted supply line in the most efficient way possible.
Hopefully the consumer Pi isn’t lost for good, but this seems far from corporate greed, but a necessary concession during a global disaster.
“When there were”, implying you can find a pi4 in stock right now that isn’t from a scalper
I bought one from a microcenter two months ago. They were out of 4gb but had dozens of 8gb
Wait, a company can just decide to abandon hundreds of their hardware in the middle the streets?
Privatized profits, socialized loses.
Corporations be like:
🐰
👉👉
Companies can just dump shit wherever when they’re done with it and have no responsibility to clean it up?
🌎👨🚀🔫👩🚀
It’s not abandoned property unless the finder doesn’t know who it belongs to.
If the name of the company is on the scooter, it is mislaid property, not abandoned property.
The classic bar exam question on this involves the finder of a bag of money. In one hypothetical, it’s a plain canvas bag. In another, it has the name of a bank on the bag.
When the name is there, you have to give it back. The finder only gets to keep it if after legal notice and a waiting period, the owner fails to reclaim it. In most states there is a statute on this, and most of them require turning the property over to police temporarily.
I’d be willing to risk it all for the pi.
honestly, I would too. even though supplies are starting to bounce back (mainly in the USA, and I’m not in the USA), a free Pi is a free Pi. I generally can find uses for more pi’s…
When the fine for littering and the cost of repair or recycling is higher than what you can recoup from this sort of lost property, it’s a win win for the police.
and most of them require turning the property over to police temporarily.
This is probably paranoid, but I always assumed that a cop would get his cousin to come in and claim it, or that the station would just keep it and then be like “oh yeah… yeah the owner claimed that 2 days before the expiration period”.
Official protocols aside; this is exactly what would happen lmao
Oh yeah, I don’t know firsthand but I’d bet it’s pretty common.
What if the “bag of money” didn’t have any money in it at all, and the cost of recovering and properly disposing of the “bag of money” cost the legal owners more than what the bag and it’s contents are worth?
Oh, sure, it comes down to knowledge of the facts. If the owner manifests an intention not to recover it, then it is abandoned. But if you just find the scooter, or even if the company has said it’s going out of business, that’s not the same as having knowledge that the owner has no intent to retrieve the property.
Counterpoint: all of that is irrelevant if the legal owners don’t care enough to sue you.
I mean everything is legal unless someone enforces the contrary.
So are rentals scooters still popular in US cities or has that trend subsided? Last I heard people were getting fed up finding them everywhere, problems with vandals, etc.
My city still has them. They get picked up every night and put at whatever corners or lots they gather them to.
Honestly in my experience anyone that’s complained about them has no idea at all what they do or how they work, so anyone “fed up finding them everywhere” is simply ignorant 99% of the time. They’re supposed to be everywhere lol that’s the entire point.
That’s all fine until they’re blocking sidewalks and access ways. Trying to push a stroller or wheelchair through the renta-scooter slalom course is horrible.
In my city, we have strict parking designated zones and you have to take a photo. If it’s left on the sidewalk or road, it won’t let you end the trip, implies it will fine you, plus they’ll send someone to move it.
Likewise. I live in an extremely high foot traffic/high scooter traffic area (beach town in SoCal) and I very rarely see them anywhere outside of the designated zones.
I’m glad you’re not over exaggerating or anything
I walk 20 minutes each way to and from work, and every single day at least once I’m having to skirt around a stack of scooters that some asshole has just dumped in the middle of the footpath blocking most of it.
I’m able bodied so at worst it’s annoying having to walk on the muddy grass, but if I was in anyway disabled - required a wheelchair, or a mobility scooter, or just crutches - it will effectively render the footpath impassable.
If the scooter companies are going to take over public property for their own private profit, they should at a minimum be paying to rent space from the city - same as if you want to hold a private concert in a public park
This is less a problem about the actual scooters though and more of an issue with the people using them (or people setting them up) not giving a damn about where they’re left.
I have mobility issues and can’t use the footpath on Fridays because that’s rubbish collection day and people just leave their bins in the middle of the footpath. People in my area also park on the footpaths, across the foot paths and leave all sorts of crap from their property leaning out onto them. That’s despite it being illegal to do so.
If most people used the scooters responsibly (put their bins out responsibly, parked their cars on their property or road, etc. etc.) it would mostly be a non-issue.
I agree. That is the heart of the problem.
I didn’t say they block every sidewalk in the city. I said when they DO it’s extremely disruptive. Relax.
S/He is not. Even one blocked sidewalk means that I need to double back on the block if I am using my wheelchair. One scooter is all it takes, and depending on the length of the block, it can easily add 20 minutes to a commute.
Them ‘supposed to be everywhere’ doesn’t change that fact that they litter up the sidewalk and use the public areas of my town as a pseudo frontage for their business.
I have no problem with the bike systems that have docs for the bikes, it centralizes the locations and keeps the bike organized.
It’s not ignorance, it’s a full understanding that they pollute the public areas and already limited walkways in my city.
Ohmygod people other than you are using the public services! The pollution!
Seriously though, it’s going to be different in every city. Your city might not be a good place for them. My city has them being used all the time.
They are a for profit company, not a public service.
The scooters are not a problem on wide sidewalks and are better than more vehicle traffic, but they can certainly get in the way on narrow sidewalks.
In some countries the public transport is run by for-profit companies too. In my city, for example, ALL of the public transport are contracted private companies. They’re all liveried as public transport, but they’re still privately run.
There is a key distinction between a contracted public service and a private company running a for-profit business. Think buses (as you described) vs taxis.
Not always. And I don’t see the key distinction you mean. Can you explain further.
Using the example of my city again, there’s no difference between the buses and taxis here in terms of contracted or not. The various bus companies are all privately owned. Some still have their own liveries. Some have the city council liveries. Some bus services don’t have regular contracts with the council/government at all and just run various private services. Sometimes the council will contract them for one off services. Regardless of how they look or the contract (or lack thereof), they’re all privately owned.
All the taxis are private owned. But the government/council contracts them for certain purposes. For example, if you are injured and unable to drive, ACC will pay for a taxi to take you to and from health services.
All of these companies are for-profita nd make profit from their contracts.
The profit made by some of the public services by private companies is a regular issue of contention in this country. As is the selling off by state owned public interest facilities (such as the rail system, power generation, communications, etc.).
I guess that puts me in the 1%. I live in Richmond, VA. It’s a great city for scooters and on occasion I will rent one. That said, they really do literally litter the sidewalks. If I go for a run, I will 100% have to avoid scooters that have been improperly parked and are blocking the sidewalk. I feel bad for disabled people because sometimes the sidewalk is completely blocked for somebody in a wheelchair. There are too many of them for the demand. It can be quite annoying.
In my European city they’re still popular but imho it’s a grift to get money from investors with large pockets. I see brands popping out and go out of the market in 6 months. They just need to lose just the right amount of money in order to have the longest list of supported cities at the moment of raising capital. It’s an application that’s too expensive for every day use (1 euro unlock fee + 20 cents a minute in a city with a subway and extensive bus network???) but at the same time that ridiculous amount of money is clearly not enough to be sustainable. And they all use dark patterns. App forces you to register with email and sms verification just to see prices and you need to recharge credit that you might be never be able to use. Most they auto charge the credit card for 10 euro as soon as the credit goes under 5 euro.
Maybe the real money making activity is unusable credit in user accounts?
Yeah the pricing only makes sense for occasional use, yet of course they market it for your daily commutes as well. It would cost me about 5€ to ride to work with those, another 5€ to ride back, which would total something like 100€ per month.
I just bought my own instead as, it’s a fun, practical and cheap way to commute if you own your own. I can easily carry it with me to my apartment so it doesn’t get stolen and costs next to nothing to use compared to a car.
Yes, for commutes don’t make any sense
I got a 60 min coupon to try the service, to go home I take the subway then I choose between bus + 2 min walk or just 10 minutes walk. With the scooter I can do it in 5 minutes but:
-
It took one minute to unlock
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I could be fined as my city requires all riders to have an helmet
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It takes 5+ minutes to lock because the app is “smart” and uses ai to see from a picture if you parked it correctly. No signal or bad lighting makes the photo unclear? Try to park in a different neighborhood…
So I pay 2 euro for do the same route in the same time that I would take by foot. Not good for commutes, not good for short routes, not good for long routes
-
Same in my smaller UK city. If you’re a tourist, it’s probably a decent idea. Might work in London or somewhere like that. But Nottingham? Who is going there to see the sights? There’s only a slightly rubbish castle. Don’t take long to see that. Most of the Robin Hood tat is up at Sherwood Forest, and you ain’t taking a toy scooter to go and see that.
For a commuter, that scooter would be taken to their office, would sit outside all day, then they’d take it back. Just the regular 9 to 5 workday. That’s not a sustainable business model. They’d need to be just in a really busy area, and in use all the time.
Not living in a city with these scooters but in a country that has 10+ different virtual wallets services. I can tell you 101% it’s all about the credit sit in the customers’ accounts that obviously easy but not straightforward to pull out and stay there a long long time.
It was never about the “convenience” for anyone. It’s the same scheme of holding people’s credit.
You can make more money with a flop than with a hit??
I hope to see the prison yard scooter industry taking investors soon.
I can’t say anything about US cities, but they are all over the place in Canadian cities(or at least they are where I live)
Denver still has a ton of them. They’re still a huge logistics problem, but the city seems to be putting “protected” lanes in to help with scooters and bikes. Time will tell.
My city still has them. They’re pretty widely used, but I think we’re a good scenario for them. Our sidewalks aren’t cramped, we’re a very spread out city, and our public transit isn’t stellar.
I live in a major US city, and yes they are still everywhere and being used. Here they have an actual use since walkability isn’t the best, and at worse are just a nuisance with the way they block parts of the sidewalk and can be left anywhere with little consequence.
They didn’t last where I live, but my mother lives in a town about an hour away (Bloomington, Indiana) which still has them, and they appear to be popular.
They took them out of my small town, mostly due to the company (I think it was Bird in our area) not picking them up for weeks on end.
I’m personally glad they’re gone, too many douche canoes leaving them in the handicapped parking spots and on the walking trails. Finally had to lodge a complaint with the company when we found a bunch of them in front of the ER at my workplace…not like we have people who have mobility issues going in there or anything.
lots of people throw them in the river
Which is incredibly gross. Stealing components from them is at least practical, but destroying them for funsies is equal parts childish and wasteful and not to mention dangerous. No one needs additional garbage to fish out of the water.
Shouldn’t leave them on the sidewalk then
That’s gross, and so are you.
Whatever, get your trash off the sidewalk
They take up way less space than what’s allocated for cars. But because it appears different you’ll not notice that the car parking takes away so much space that could be allocated to e.g. a wider sidewalk, dedicated bike lines, more green, or parking for more space efficient methods of transport such as rental scooters.
I’m against car parking on streets too, that doesn’t mean random companies should get to dump their product anywhere they want on the sidewalks.
Oh big man over here lol
How is trash in the river better?
Yeah I saw a couple videos of people magnet fishing them out. The one amazingly still worked!
It’s a legitimate salvage.
Remember the Cant!
I am that guy
Edit: someone doesn’t know the best quote: https://youtu.be/4dn76ZPt_Y0
Let’s go shuck some scoots, boys!
That was my first thought, get a few of them and create yourself a scootermox cluster 😂
Can we just rip the software out and have a free electric scooter?
Can you just take apart abandoned things for parts in the states? Probably just have to be a white male and no problems?
Probably, who is gonna come after you? The company has decided it is too expensive to repossess them.
deleted by creator
in Germany it would count as theft and destroying of property of others even if it’s abandoned.
Technically it’s theft in the US too, but the owner doesn’t exist anymore so no one’s going after you (assuming cops don’t see you)
Self-hosted scooter!
I swear they probably followed an instructables to found the startup…
Lime still seems to be doing business in Austin. Not sure about the other brands.
They’re somewhat popular in Milwaukee, WI too
