The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Recumbent Bicycling

Cruisin’ the streets

  • Cycliq Fly6 Failure and Teardown

    Cycliq Fly6 Failure and Teardown

    My Cycliq Fly6 continued to shut down during rides, even with a new video-rated card, suggesting:

    • The fault resides in the camera
    • The Samsung card is just fine

    Following all the steps recommended by Cycliq Tech Support didn’t improve the situation. It’s just under two years old and thus outside the warranty, so they advised me to buy their new, not-quite-released-yet Fly6, now with Bluetooth / ANT+ / phone app / shiny, but still with a non-replaceable battery.

    Seeing as how the Fly6 works as well as it ever did, apart from the minor issue of shutting down both dependably and intermittently, the problem is almost certainly a bad battery. Cycliq does not offer a repair service, nor a battery replacement service; being based in Australia probably contributes to not wanting to get into those businesses. You’re supposed to responsibly recycle the Whole Damn Thing when the battery goes bad. Which, inevitably, it does.

    Protip: anything with a non-replaceable battery is a toy, not a tool.

    The most recent ride gave some evidence supporting a bad battery. The first shutdown happened after about half an hour and it gave off three battery status beeps (four = full charge, as at the start of the ride) when I restarted it a few minutes later. It shut down again a few minutes later while we were stopped at a traffic signal and gave off one lonely charge beep when I reached back to restart it, indicating a very low battery voltage. The battery voltage (and the number of startup beeps) increased with longer delays between shutdown and restart, but after the first shutdown it’s never very enthusiastic.

    Having nothing to lose, let’s see what’s inside:

    Cycliq Fly6 Teardown from inside
    Cycliq Fly6 Teardown from inside

    Don’t do as I did: you should extract the MicroSD card before you dismantle the camera.

    Remove the rubber plugs sealing the four case screws:

    Fly6 - Exterior screw plugs out
    Fly6 – Exterior screw plugs out

    The case pops open, with a ribbon cable between the LEDs and the main circuit board:

    Fly6 - Case opened
    Fly6 – Case opened

    Pull the ribbon cable latch away from the connector before pulling the cable out.

    It’s amazing what you find inside a blinky taillight these days:

    Fly6 - PCB Top side
    Fly6 – PCB Top side

    I’m sure there’s a fancy 32 bit RISC computer in the big chip, along with plenty of flash ROM just below it. The clutter over on the right seems to be the power supply. Yeah, it has a camera in addition to blinky LED goodness, plus USB charging, so eight bits of microcontroller aren’t nearly enough.

    There’s supposed to be some nanotech waterproofing protecting everything inside. It sure looks like magic to me and, in any event, solders just like a layer of ordinary air.

    Note: the case screws are slightly longer than the PCB retaining screws:

    Fly6 - Case and PCB Screws
    Fly6 – Case and PCB Screws

    The underside of the PCB has even more teeny parts, along with, mirabile dictu, a battery connector and (most likely) battery charging stuff:

    Fly6 - PCB Underside
    Fly6 – PCB Underside

    A plastic piece holds the “Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery Pack” in place:

    Fly6 - Battery in place
    Fly6 – Battery in place

    A strip of gooey adhesive holding the mic and speaker wires in place also glues the battery strap to the case, but it will yield to gentle suasion from a razor knife.

    Pause to count ’em up:

    • Four case screws (longer)
    • Three PCB screws
    • Two battery screws

    It looked a lot like an ordinary 18650 lithium cell to me and, indeed, it is:

    Fly6 - Battery - label
    Fly6 – Battery – label

    More razor knife work removes the outer shrinkwrap. The cell has a protection PCB under the black cardboard cover:

    Fly6 - Battery Protection PCB - on 18650 cell
    Fly6 – Battery Protection PCB – on 18650 cell

    I don’t know what the yellow wire does:

    Fly6 - Battery Protection PCB - wire side
    Fly6 – Battery Protection PCB – wire side

    The FS8205A on the left may be an SII S8205 protection IC preset and packaged for a single cell:

    Fly6 - Battery Protection PCB - components
    Fly6 – Battery Protection PCB – components

    After all that, yeah, it’s a dead battery:

    Fly6 OEM 18650 - EOL - 2017-12-06
    Fly6 OEM 18650 – EOL – 2017-12-06

    The red curve shows the in-circuit charge state after taking it apart, the green curve comes from charging the bare cell in my NiteCore D4 charger. I have no idea what the nominal current drain might be, but a 0.25 Ah capacity is way under those Tenergy cells.

    A new cell-with-tabs should arrive next week, whereupon I’ll solder the protection circuit in place, wrap it up, pop it back in the case, and see how it behaves.

  • Sandisk 32 GB High Endurance Video Monitoring Card

    Despite my misgivings, “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” suggests I could return a Sandisk 32 GB High Endurance MicroSD card if things turned out badly:

    MicroSD 32 GB - Samsung EVO and SanDisk High Endurance
    MicroSD 32 GB – Samsung EVO and SanDisk High Endurance

    Unlike the Samsung cards, Sandisk charges a substantial premium for not buying through Amazon.

    Verifying the card using f3probe produced the same results as with the earlier 64 GB card and copying the existing files from the Fly6 card (on the left) went smoothly:

    
rsync -rtv /mnt/Fly6/ /mnt/part

    “High Endurance” means it’s rated for 5000 hours of “Full HD” recording, which they think occurs at 26 Mb/s. The Fly6 records video in 10 minutes chunks, each weighing about 500 MB, call it 1 MB/s = 8 Mb/s, a third of their nominal pace. One might reasonably expect this card to outlive the camera.

    As with the AS30V, we shall see …

  • Sandisk Extreme Plus: End of Life

    The Fly6 rear camera on my bike started giving off three long beeps and shutting down. Doing the reformatting / rebooting dance provides only temporary relief, so I think the card has failed:

    Sandisk Extreme Plus vs. Samsung EVO MicroSD cards
    Sandisk Extreme Plus vs. Samsung EVO MicroSD cards

    The Fly6 can handle cards up to only 32 GB, which means I should stock up before they go the way of the 8 GB card shipped with the camera a few years ago.

    Some back of the envelope calculations:

    • It’s been in use for the last 19 months
    • The last 22 trips racked up 88 GB of video data = 4 GB/trip
    • They occurred over the last 6 weeks = 3.6 rides/week
    • Call it 250 trips = 1 TB of data written to the card = 32 × capacity

    That’s only slightly more than the failure point of the Sony 64 GB MicroSDXC cards. The Fly6 writes about a third of the data per trip, so the card lasts longer on a calendar basis.

    So now let’s find out how long the Samsung cards last …

  • Hooker Avenue at Raymond: Left Turn on Red

    T=0: You can’t tell, but the signals for Hooker Avenue have been yellow for several seconds and are about to turn red:

    Raymond - Left on Red - 2017-10-11 - 1
    Raymond – Left on Red – 2017-10-11 – 1

    T+3: The opposing signals have been red for a while, but nobody much cares about that:

    Raymond - Left on Red - 2017-10-11 - 2
    Raymond – Left on Red – 2017-10-11 – 2

    T+11: Right-turning traffic (with a green arrow) blocks his path, so he just drops to a dead stop in the middle of the intersection:

    Raymond - Left on Red - 2017-10-11 - 3
    Raymond – Left on Red – 2017-10-11 – 3

    T+14: Finally! All clear for a left on red:

    Raymond - Left on Red - 2017-10-11 - 4
    Raymond – Left on Red – 2017-10-11 – 4

    When a cyclist delays a driver for two, maybe three, seconds, even while riding legally, outrage occurs.

    And, yeah, I’ve made mistakes, too. Happens to everybody. Cyclists seem to arouse disproportionate outrage, so I try very hard to ride within the rules and the lines.

  • SRAM Shift Indicator Repair: Polypropylene Sheet

    Over the course of a few weeks, both of the indicators in the SRAM grip shifters on my bike snapped off. Having recently touched my parallel jaw clamp assortment, it occurred to me I could mold snippets of polypropylene sheet (saved from random clamshell packages for just such a purpose) around the nose of a clamp and come out pretty close to the final shape:

    SRAM Shift Indicator - shaped replacements
    SRAM Shift Indicator – shaped replacements

    A hot air gun set on LOW and held a foot away softened the polypro enough so a gloved thumb could squash it against the jaw. Too much heat shrinks the sheet into a blob, too little heat lets the sheet spring back to its original shape.

    The flat tab of the original indicator is about 1 mm thick. I found a package of 47 mil = 1.2 mm sheet with one nice right-angle bend and ran with it.

    Because I expect sunlight will fade any color other than black, that’s the Sharpie I applied.

    They don’t look as awful as you might expect. The rear shifter, minus the cover:

    SRAM Shift Indicator - rear detail
    SRAM Shift Indicator – rear detail

    The front shifter, with cover installed and HT PTT button below the still-good Kapton tape:

    SRAM Shift Indicator - front assembled
    SRAM Shift Indicator – front assembled

    The transparent covers press the OEM indicators down and do the same for my homebrew tabs. I expect the Sharpie will wear quickly at those contact points; next time, I should tint the other side.

    They’re rather subtle, I’ll grant you that.

    Now, to see if they survive long enough to make the worry about a brighter color fading away a real problem…

  • Sunglass Earpiece Trimming

    Mary doesn’t like wearing the wrap-around-her-head earpieces found on sunglasses these days under her bicycle helmet, so I must trim them to fit:

    Sunglass earpiece trim
    Sunglass earpiece trim

    Perhaps I won’t need an old pair to prepare the next set: a scant four inches from the hinge.

  • Burnett Blvd at Rt 55: Passing on the Right, Redux

    As usual, we’re at the Rt 55 end of Burnett Blvd, returning home from a grocery trip; I’m hauling two full bags of chow in the trailer. The white car pulling up immediately to our left will make a left turn from the left lane:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 01
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 01

    The more distant white car, turning left out of Overocker, is eases past us in the right lane to make a right turn:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 02
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 02

    We’re on the left side of the right lane, rather than the right, to avoid right hook collisions with drivers who flat-out do not stop before turning. Been there, had that happen, we know better.

    The car approaching in the right lane will attempt to pass us on the right:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 03
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 03

    That’s happened before, too, so I’m watching this happen in  my mirror. My line will pass to the right of the inconveniently placed manhole cover in the intersection:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 04
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 04

    Mary’s nearing the right side of the lane, I’m in the middle, and the driver jams to a stop rather than run up over the sidewalk:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 05
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 05

    The passenger window is rolling down, which is always a Bad Sign:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 06
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 06

    It’s all the way down and I know what’s about to happen:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 07
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 07

    So I preempt the discussion by pointing out she was passing in an intersection and the license plate on the silver Chevy say FEX-4194:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 08
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 08

    She passes Mary and stops directly ahead of us in the middle of the right-hand lane. We jam to a stop behind her. The black car approaching us swerves into the middle lane:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 09
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 09

    She pulls around the corner onto Manchester and stops in the intersection. I stop well behind her to remain visible from Rt 55, which turns out to be a Good Idea:

    Burnett at Rt 55 - Right Pass - 2017-09-19 - 10
    Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 10

    Mary eases beside the drivers window, which rolls down. The driver says she’s going to call the police, “because we pulled directly in front of her”. Mary points out we have video of the entire encounter. The window rolls up and the driver pulls away.

    Overocker, Burnett, and a short sprint on Rt 55 to Manchester is the only route from the grocery store to Rt 376 and home, so it’s not like we’re looking for trouble.

    No helmet camera video, alas, because I tried those piece-of-crap Wasabi batteries in the Sony HDR-AS30V and the second one was flat-out dead. The first one, in the camera when I left home, showed empty after the half-hour ride to the grocery store, so they really are junk; “Premium Japanese cells” my foot.