You shouldn’t try electric scooter, if you don’t want to have fun
The other day, I had to pick my car from a workshop in Trondheim. It was a usual July summer evening in Norway. Most Norwegians go on holidays during July and all businesses, transport services slow down.
That evening, I got a call from the workshop that my car is ready for pick up. As the workshop was about to close, I called a few friends to get a ride but none of them were available. Also, there were no good bus connections from my apartment to workshop. Therefore I started walking. After ten minutes, I saw a vacant electric scooter and decided to use it because it can go much faster than walking.
First, I downloaded the Tier app and then entered my credit card information using a mobile phone camera. Within some minutes, I unlocked the scooter. It was fun and easy to ride. I ended my ride just at the edge of the no-go zone because going beyond it would slow down the scooter considerably.
Scooter ecosystem and connectivity
The ecosystem consists of scooters, users, and a cloud server. A scooter periodically updates its location in the cloud using a GPS receiver and cellular modem (3G / 4G / NB-IOT). It also uses a BLE modem to communicate with the app on user mobile. A customer utilizes a scooter app to find available nearby scooters.
Unlocking Scooter using QR code
The user must unlock the scooter before starting the ride. The most popular unlock method is to scan the QR code using the mobile camera. The mobile relays the unlock request to the cloud server. Then, the mobile or the cloud issues the unlocking command to the scooter, and the user can start the ride.
Unlocking Scooter using Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)
The other unlock method uses Bluetooth LE. An electric scooter is in the connection-less mode most of the time and is waiting to be discovered by mobile phone. It’s Bluetooth LE link layer is in advertising mode and is periodically broadcasting advertising data.
To confirm this Bluetooth LE functionality, I visited Trondheim Torg. It had many vacant scooters. I came close to these scooters, started the nRF Connect app to scan for Bluetooth advertisers, and filtered on keyword Scooter. As a result, I saw a few Voi and Tier scooters on the app, each with a unique Bluetooth device address.
Using BLE to unlock the scooter is 2x faster
Bird riders can unlock their scooter 2x times faster with BLE than the traditional QR scan-to-unlock method saving valuable time.
Conclusion
Don’t be afraid to approach these electric scooters scattered around Trondheim. They can be used by just about anyone, as long as you’ve got the app.