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[Music]
[Applause]
okay
so we have speedy we have scooty
welcome and enjoy and have a good time
we're happy you're here thank you
speedy and today uh we're gonna
talk about open coil um what it is
what it is not uh our motivation for
this project
the technology behind it uh technology
reused
and some funny things we encountered
along the way um stay
until the end because we will be sharing
some of
um yeah our builds so you can replicate
replicate this yourself
um please enjoy the talk this is all
live so we're not sure what's gonna
happen
but we have a trusted clipboard here so
i'm confident we can do this how about
you speedy
well we'll find out right so um let's
dive right in
um what is open coil um you can see a
bunch of uh
scooters around us here um open coil
uh open coil basically um is a concept
for a mobile art show on um these
dockles electric sharing vehicles or
in short vehicles that can be rented by
a
app um it ran for one week
end of october this year basically
the two of us we came up with this
concept and we then invited
um 10 artists to
share their works with us and present
them on
these e-scooters open coil
builds on the idea
of the speed show as well as
offline art and some
maybe some influence of the dead drop as
well all
brilliant uh concepts by um media artist
again bartol we basically
for open coil we basically took these
ideas
and tried to merge them together
into a concept that then uses
non-destructive add-ons that we
can put on these scooters
to host the
artworks by all the individual um
artists um basically
uh once these scooters are modified with
our add-on
we can release them into the streets and
they
become available for the public
in the whole micro mobility service area
um we came upon this idea because we
wanted
to interact with these micro mobility
services
basically open coil it
appropriates their infrastructure so
one thing that is out there for for
everyone to use and we
this open call concept it appropriates
this infrastructure
as a decentralized network of of nodes
scooters um and then we can share
artworks on all of them um
we the artists um we
we invited them we wrote them an email
about this idea we had
um and we told them okay so we're
looking for
a small art pieces art
um that can be stored on um
two megabytes of of storage and
the result well the response was
overwhelming to us as well because like
we we
got immediately got responses from a
bunch of really really really brilliant
artists out there and they all
helpful and supportive and um actually
created
most of the work that you can see or you
were able to see in
the show were created for this show
especially
and they were all then uh optimized
to be viewed on mobile devices since
this roaming speed show is actually well
decentralized and you would need to
go into public space find a scooter
connect with your phone to that scooter
via wi-fi
and then the artwork that was stored on
the
scooter was with was visible
for for the visitors of the of the art
show
um all all of the arts
all of the artworks are somewhat uh
concept
context specific words they all deal
with
either movement or um just capitalism in
general
um some of them even um with the
pandemic since
obviously this all came about um while
the pandemic was happening and the
concept really
um it wasn't really pandemic
driven but maybe accelerated since
um while we were already working on this
concept
we realized oh these all these
restrictions and
um yeah restrictions that came up on the
general gallery industry or
where you would go normally go as an art
enthusiast to to look at art
they were all sort of like limited in
what they were able to present
what they were able to offer and a lot
of the um
a lot of the uh galleries traditional
more traditional galleries
they then uh moved all of their
um available
shows to the online
some of them in very interesting and
creative ways
others really just pictures of
artworks they have hanging around in
their galleries and you could
just like click through a slideshow and
that basically
led to us thinking oh okay so how about
we take
our net art that is usually already
presented in the
online world and take them offline just
to show
okay so there's actually um maybe
different solutions that are still like
completely pandemic friendly to present
uh
art in the in the offline space other
than just
going online um
there is uh for example this work here
um it's sarah grant's contribution to
our show
um it's a little mobile game that
deals with pandemic um
as you have like you have to fight
little coronaviruses
and and it's it's like based in the city
of berlin which is
where open coil first first happened so
this
this work is really nice to show how
involved the artists were with
with the concept of open coil and
how creative they they got and and
to to develop art that is suitable for
this
um yeah uh so
in short we we had a
small gathering here in front of the
central finance in berlin to have like a
small
test opening to like for all the artists
and and
friends friends who like see the
artworks
and for us for us to test our hard and
software tests if everything
was working the way we was we supposed
uh we we thought that we thought it
would work and uh we found a couple of
bugs we found a couple of issues
which we then were able to um solve
in time for the official opening where
we would then release all of the
scooters onto the streets of berlin
to be actually fully publicly accessible
and then
um watch our scooters move uh through
berlin that is basically
the whole concept um maybe
speedy can say something or scooty can
say something about
why we even used scooters in the first
place
yeah so um like both individually were
already like very interested in in
this whole movie movement of these micro
mobility services
um in general
and especially scooters specifically
um it's
it's very strange to like overnight uh
be confronted
uh in your city um with a bunch of
of like highly technical uh
species occupying the same sort of
ecology as
you are um and this this really yeah
made us think like
like what are these these animals or or
things
or or species um
it it immediately triggered also
questions about
uh about public space itself um
whereas before it might have been
you know unnoticed um but all of a
sudden this this
semi-public space was was occupied by
like private private companies uh
vehicles and it just
brought up a lot of emotions and not
only like artists or researchers
but also like in with normal people
and you might have seen the gut
reactions of
a lot of people who could not park their
bike anymore on the streets
because it was occupied by a bunch of
scooters
um such as
yeah throwing them into the river or
you know breaking them on purpose and
while this is a reaction coming from
from the
people who are engaged suddenly they are
like they all experience the same
thing that we experienced that all of a
sudden overnight there are these
thousands of new well
things occupying the same space that we
regularly occupy or that we
um will live in and yeah that triggered
emotional responses uh and yeah a lot of
critique yeah and it's it's it's just
very
interesting to to see this sheer amount
of technology that these
species are carrying with them and how
this is
sort of dumped freely on the street to
to um yeah interact with
you know normally you would use a mobile
phone to rent these
uh randy's cars or scooters
and drive around and get charged from
your credit card
but yeah we were sort of
looking for ways to to um
yeah regain sort of agency in this in
this sort of
newly newly created ecology where uh
seemingly anyone can can occupy or take
this this
public good and we were very interested
in in the ways how these
companies also did this um
so yeah that that also led us to
today to the next to the next part um of
our
sort of interest um
like how to engage with these uh
scooters
um not by ranting them but uh
in a sort of public way so instead of
looking for
backdoors or bugs or whatever
um how can you engage with these these
practices of sharing vehicles
um venture capitalism in in ways that
are like publicly accessible
um without breaking anything
um yeah uh
so but by by sort of chance um was like
a year ago
we tried to to like charge a phone on a
scooter we found on the streets
and it would actually charge it without
renting it first so in a way
uh we discovered that uh we had like we
discovered free energy
um and then this is all right it's just
more or less yes yeah we we found the
first
uh entry point the first portal of
communication
that made it available to us uh to
engage the school scooters
um in a different way than that
maybe the the micro mobility service
intended
to and also um this just
opened up motivated us to do
to do a different approach
yeah so um there's actually two uh main
ingredients to our project
um that are actually focusing on
on how to publicly approach these things
um
one part is a software part and the
other part
as said before is a hardware element
so before going into the software maybe
you can we can briefly explain
that these models that are shown here
actually are outfitted with a little um
charging pad so under under the steering
wheel
there's a sort of clip where you can
mount your mobile phone on
and if it's compatible with wireless
charging
it will charge your phone while you're
driving it around which is nice because
yeah
if you rent this thing and you run out
of battery and you cannot lock it again
yeah you have a problem i mean
i don't like this service line um
without a
battery so this is a sort of nice
service that goes
both ways i guess um
the other part is the the the software
part um maybe speedy
you can yeah um basically
um after we discovered this first entry
point we
just tried to think of of other
things that this these micro mobility
services
will hand us for free that or or that
are publicly available
and um we found out okay so
the next major thing that these
that of this major like block of
information that they will release
um without account app anything
is uh the locations of their scooters
and their battery status and stuff like
that
it's all if you download their specific
server the specific services app um
you'll see
without even logging in creating an
account putting credit card
information down or anything you will
already be able to see
um where the scooters are located um
what is their uh license plate number or
um i like their their vehicle id um
as well as their their battery status
and um
basically we um looked a little deeper
and and then we've
we found um um just lying around
uh on the internet um we found uh an api
key that was previously discovered by a
guy who
discovered github a guy who put it on
the github
and which we found um and then this
this api key basically um gave us
the capabilities to uh run
api requests and like get responses with
all the information that we
needed to develop our open coil concept
further so basically
what we did we we built a website
for optimized for mobile devices
obviously that would
then um allow its visitors to locate
the scooters that we had modified and
totally those so
not all the scooters as in all the
schools that would usually show up in
your in your
app um just those scooters that had our
arch gallery modification on them
and we found out about different
statuses that these
scooters can have through the response
that we got from the api
for example if someone
rents out a scooter that has this
gallery space
its status obviously changes from
available
to unavailable so that um
another user of the micro mobility
services they wouldn't
see the scooter anymore on their app
because someone else is already using it
and we implemented these different
statuses in our
um in our website as well to um better
show
or or to well notify
visitors of our gallery when um a
scooter becomes unavailable because
it's either rented out or maybe it's
battery drained or
it got damaged overnight all these
different things we basically found out
while observing
the behavior of these um vehicles over
time
and we figured okay so there are all
these different um
statuses that um they can be in and
which we can implement in in our
um in our website to make um
to make it more clear to our visitors
which scooters are actually
available to be located in the wild
and watch the artwork that is on there
and which of them maybe
aren't anymore um yeah here
you
statuses that these scooters can be in
and it shows
a lot about the scooters and it always
shows their
current location um
so as soon as we basically had this
these tools we immediately noticed that
uh as soon as we like put these scooters
out we had very low expectations of
like the general life cycle of
or life expectancy of one of our modules
because looking at the schools and
looking how they were treated by the
public
we had we were like very um
curious to see if like how long our
modules will actually last and
um just looking at the map and like um
reloading it all the time um to see if
something changed um it
it was uh fun it was it has a fun
it has always it has us
it had us um physically engaged with the
scooters again because we were like
sitting at home and
um reloading the website all the time to
just
like to look where our scooters are
where our babies are
whether they need service and we would
then like every time something changed
every time like a
scooter's icon switch to like
maintenance or
um battery or something we would then um
like drive there and look if our module
is damaged in any way or if it's like
broken if it's still working and through
through
through this engagement we um
yeah we've we just um
found out so much more about how these
services
operate and how um
yeah how the scooters are actually used
um
and yeah we we were taking good care of
these
like modules that we had put on which is
the
the hardware part of our um of our
concept
and maybe we can tell something more
about that
yeah so up until now um
there wasn't a single hack really
um we are we've just been using
like uh publicly available um
accessible resources to build like an
alternative infrastructure on top of an
existing one
as speedy just showed we created a map
to
to track all the vehicles we had
outfitted with
with our sort of hardware implant or
parasite if you like
which is basically uh a replica of the
existing uh charging port for your
mobile phone on the
on the scooter so um you have a bunch of
lighting here around
also in real life um
and yeah maybe we can just sort of like
walk you quickly through the
technology we developed to sort of
harness the
the free energy available on these
devices
which again is uh it's a feature
it's not a bug
so if we start
here i'm sitting right on top
of a microcontroller with wi-fi
um esp12f
that creates a wireless hotspot
and runs a web server that contains the
the artworks so
anyone could connect to it with a mobile
phone or
a laptop and they will get a little
pop-up
on android it's sometimes a bit more
difficult sometimes not
um it will present you the the artwork
that's that's running on it
um if we go a bit further down
there's a a little black thingy it's a
voltage regulator that um because um
that turns the 5 volt from the charging
coil
into 3.3 volts for the esp
um if we follow the the green line it's
our
custom pcb we made to sort of snugly
fit all the electronics into the the
replica of the of the charging pad
um you'll see a beautiful copper coil
with some electronics on it um
this is a sort of soldier's diy
module to create your own um
like phone charging station or device or
whatever
um it is capable to turn
uh like the qi standard wireless
charging
uh standard uh developed for for mobile
phones
uh which is alternating current
um it turns it into a direct current
of 5 volts um that can be in turn
used by the esp after it's been
shifted to 3.3 volts
um yeah i mean let's say that this
um we use the different versions of this
car in in the process and
um originally this like board set up
here or like just the coil and the
and the small board attached to it is
we found these were boards that were
created to
give this wireless qi capability to
devices that
didn't have that before so
basically make everything qi
capable which is the standard that these
charging pads were using so
we just took one of these uh to
charge our or just power our gallery
chip yeah there are also
other models that are sort of adapters
for
older phones so you can turn your old
phone into
a wireless chargeable phone
some of these they require some
modifications
which we will later share as well
yeah maybe one fun thing to notice
is that yeah there's no
way to connect to this thing uh
physically um
so yeah one of the limitations of uh two
megabytes
uh comes from the fact that um we can
update these microcontrollers
over the air so we can update the
firmware running on it using a wi-fi
and yeah we actually did not password
protect this
uh left it intentionally open in like
the hope that someone would
find a scooter on the streets um find
this
this strange module and then um yeah
would be able to like repurpose it for
its own uh for his own goals
one of the sort of goals was to
to make it sort of easy to apply
easy to remove and non-destructible
and i think maybe the the the most
important thing or
the most
um is not hampered by this uh or
obstructed by this adult
so you can still charge your phone
if you put it on the pad so
here you see a little slideshow of how
to mount
our replica parasite
so it easily slides on the existing um
charging pad uh i would say the only
difference is
um the rubber anti-slip
rings um of course
our sort of yeah hand-painted
stencil with the logo yeah but basically
the purpose of this was just to
create this
mostly invisible add-on that
uh um might then be
like well will not be found by
um someone um who's not looking for it
by accident and then be
like removed immediately we wanted it to
be like very stealthy
um for for it to last longer i guess
and uh these like shells that we
vacuum molded they like fit snugly onto
the original board and they just snap on
the plastic protects the chips inside
from the
from from the weather and then yeah once
they're mounted
the asp gets powered by the scooter
and the wi-fi becomes available and you
can just
as soon as you're in range you can see
the
network on your phone you can connect to
it and a pop-up portal will
show the artwork that is on there
yeah so you have to be like that close
to the actual scooter to
view the artwork through the artwork
no yeah and basically after we've
created this um
thing we um then uh
we we mounted it uh onto a bunch of
these scooters that we found to be
charging
uh even though they weren't rented so
giving out free
power all the time we mounted them uh
those modules to
to them and then yeah as we said earlier
after our little
um um opening uh
we just put them out on the streets and
um
we're hoping that they were traveling
that they will be traveling through the
micro mobility service area on their
on themselves um and
see we um freed the scooters all
within the area of nanoikon in berlin
and you can see uh some of them
basically stayed in
noikon for the whole duration of the
show others moved
quite far like to bedding and
charlottenburg
and stuff um but yeah we were very
curious and and and and we looked very
closely
um into that data and
you can see after maybe two or three
days
uh one of the scooters made a like huge
trip
to like spandau which is actually
outside of the normal service area of
this
of these scooters and we were super
curious um
at first we thought oh this is some
drunk
driver who over the night took a scooter
on a road trip for four hours and ran
until the battery died
and we were very um worried about our
module and we wanted to see
as we said in the first couple of days
we were super worried about them and we
immediately
um decided to like step on our bikes and
bike there to um see
what was wrong with uh or if there was
anything wrong with the scooter how it
ended up there
and yeah that's how we arrived here yeah
that's how
we arrived here this
place here is the backyard
of a tier service facility so
it imminently became clear to us that
it wasn't a drunk driving we drove it
here it was actually one of the service
technicians
um that was on the regular basis
services servicing these scooters and we
had
noticed the scooter status changed to
like damage or something so
we couldn't get to the scooter and
remove our module before
it was taken here so yeah we just
followed the api
here to this location
and yeah so
we found that over the course of this
week um
maybe three scooters ended up here um
and uh as we said they
they as we found out um there were a
couple of
uh workers driving around on these
mopeds that you see here in the back
um they were moving in and out of the
warehouse and we
um quickly engaged with um with the
workers there and yeah we actually
um like as we said we we previously
found this
this uh bug of sorts we never found out
whether
uh the the possibility to charge a phone
even without
renting the scooter is a bug or if it's
a feature we
realize there's a specific number or a
specific version of the
scooters that are available for this
we realized okay there's the those
scooters that start with the two set
their
their id's will start with the 2 7 or
sometimes a 2 8
and they will all have a helmet box as
we saw in the first picture they all
have this
like black box on their um steering
um and uh we
searched the api for these specific
models and then
tracked them through the through the api
and
well it led us here to this um very
real back door into um
the workshop and uh yeah
just this this new world of or this new
layer of
the this these these companies became
very um very visible to us and obviously
um all we cared about was our scooter
we wanted to see if it's still alive if
it's still
sending a signal so why don't you follow
us
into the warehouse ta-da
here we are um this is uh what we found
when we entered the stream yeah
all these scooters uh basically
yeah all of these scooters were in need
for repair
and there were a bunch of technicians
working on them
as we said we we talked to one of them
and he was very
friendly um to let us take a peek inside
and
take a look at yeah how these screws
were serviced
and yeah a lot of realizations came from
that
yeah so speedy well what what actually
happened to the parasite
yeah but you still see it yeah we
immediately
uh yeah we immediately took out uh the
phone
and we searched for the wi-fi signal and
uh
well play grave 2020 the work by sarah
gand it was still there it was though
the wi-fi signal was really strong we
were super like stoked about it but
looking at all the scooters and i mean
some of them are
completely taken apart we were sure that
um
this this parasite of ours will
eventually get uh well found and
and then be destroyed um so
we were we weren't able to locate it
inside the area um we were also
thrown out shortly after taking this
picture
because apparently you are not allowed
to take pictures in
this facility
so yeah there was a interesting
layer indeed on top of just
you know chasing scooters on the streets
and looking at maps
um this displayed
a whole nother level of physicality
to us and
made us realize actually um what we had
become
so over the yeah the short short while
uh
during the the one week of the
exhibition um
we actually realized that we we sort of
became an ad hoc
sharing company ourselves we found
ourselves
running around berlin trying to
you know see how our modules were doing
also to see if the scooters were still
okay
um yeah certainly because yeah
if they were falling over they yeah we
had to put them up again so people would
rent them and they would get charged
again so our module we had to take care
of our gallery hosts
exactly um so i don't know if that's a
symbiotic relationship
we were in but um and of course
yeah we we also used the api in the same
way the company does
to track to track your to track our
modules
um so um
this place here also
yeah it it it just blew our minds
basically
um that you can use this publicly
available
map data basically to
find out where these scooters are going
and we were actually surprised to see
that they are actually being repaired
and not just you know recycled
um as you see they're actually like
sorted
by different levels of damage uh
here down on the floor there are some
that are
where the steering wheel column is like
completely broken off
um yeah these will be repaired or
decommissioned
um we actually decompiled
the application used by the people who
work here
it can be just found in the app store
yeah for each
each micro mobility service they
basically
um have an app that is publicly
available
that all the users will use to track
their scooters and then there's also
an app for all of these service
technicians all of the people who
um go on nightly trips to replace
batteries and
yeah we'll do what we did for a week uh
check on check on the scooters and um in
a way yeah if they need repairing they
will end up
in this place and they all have this
this app for for tiers uh it's they're
called rangers the people who
collect them and switch up batteries and
there's a shelter app which
is probably used by the people here
inside this warehouse because
while decompiling it we found all these
new
statuses that these scooters can be in
where they would have
very specific um information about the
sort of damage that was done to the
scooter whether the gps that you
issue that broadly here are or just a
damaged blinker or
steering wheel or something
all of that was sort of like within um
the api that we found
yeah so um speedy how
how many of the of the parasites did we
actually
end up losing yeah that is
a very interesting because we
um as we said we we found this place and
we
uh got thrown out of it immediately and
we were
sure to never see our module again
and for this specific module um it
actually took quite a while
like we talked to one of the service
technicians he said
usually scooters can be in and out of
here within days
for our scooter it took almost two
months
um to be back on the street
uh as soon as we realized they that the
scooter is back on the street
actually we lost uh during this week we
lost in total
three modules to this place and all
three
eventually came back on the street so
that's a a good thing they
actually all three um were able uh
were able to get repaired and yeah we
did what we did we tracked them down and
we looked at them and we were extremely
surprised
to see that our modules were still on
there
they were still working fine they were
in perfect shape
the scooters were repaired and the
galleries were back online
yeah so a possible explanation for this
um
we basically don't know um
i we can't believe that that our our
like
um add-on is so um our replica is so
well done
that uh person who works with them daily
uh wouldn't notice in in a blink of an
eye
uh when we would you know walk in berlin
on the streets
we would just spot our our models
instantaneously from across the street
without even checking your wi-fi or the
map
but yeah another explanation could be
that um
these scooters are actually uh uh
evolving
and uh also migrating so
yeah as you might have noticed if you
live in a city where these uh
e-scooters are driving around like
almost every
yeah three months there's there's a new
model going around
um either because other ones are being
decommissioned or
or whatever and maybe
yeah our module was yeah
seen as just a new another prototype or
a new model roaming the streets
um yeah i mean these these people who
work there
they didn't seem to be um actually
working
actual employees of tier they seemed
this this warehouse it seemed to be
there before even tier like it seemed to
be this
workshop that was there prior to the
micro mobility
industry um popping up in berlin and
basically it seemed to us it seemed as
if this space was just rented out
and these workers were just told to from
now on repair these
and yeah as as scooty already said like
within the time frame we were closely
engaged with these scooters we we've
seen probably
three different models um pop on the
street so it's
it's not super unlikely that the workers
there they just
thought this they were meant to look
like this
another funny coincidence
one day we found one scooter had uh
migrated to
uh marseille in france uh possibly
to look for better weather because uh
winter in berlin is of course
very cold and dark
but then we noticed that it was
next to a word which is uh like a german
engineering
company an equipment rental
um when we uh actually visited
this this space uh in berlin um
we couldn't help notice that the map um
showed a word next door as well so
there's a there's an interesting
connection there or maybe not
maybe it's just coincidence but two of
the scooters that were taken from us one
to merced
one to here they both ended up very
close to a good store
so i don't know if there's a connection
between those two
and also the scooter that was migrated
to marseille it was an older version it
was an older model and we quickly
realized that um it seems in berlin
specifically
because tier the company that
owns all of these scooters um it's a
berlin-based company
and it seems that within berlin they try
to only
operate with the latest models
and all the models will be
either decommissioned or migrated to
other locations where
maybe their presence is not as prominent
as in berlin
yeah so to sort of
wrap up our sort of approach in this um
um it was sort of a way to to
to get to know these companies and and
these devices and
and sort of try to figure out what it
what they are
um we sort of used
um like like the tactic of art or the
excuse of art i would say
um as a way to to to deal with these uh
invading species
um but yeah that's of course only uh
uh yeah one way to to to deal with this
uh we already mentioned people um yeah
um responding in ways that are um
destructive and and maybe not so
environmentally friendly
um because these uh devices um
although claimed by by all the companies
to be like co2 neutral
uh of course still contain like 20
kilograms of
lithium iron batteries and yeah if you
look around here
how many how much material there's like
seriously
on the streets and being put into this
especially considering
um the the new models every couple of
months
wow this thing is just so fast and
evolving so
fast and i guess we we can all remember
the
the pictures from china and their bike
graveyards because
previous to this version of
douglas sharing uh micro mobility
we had the rental bikes we had all these
different companies
in berlin dumping their bikes in the
streets in a very similar way to
where to like how we came upon these
beautiful
creatures and they all disappeared i
mean in berlin you can
eventually spot a broken mobike on a few
corners
but the app disappeared from the app
store and basically
they just disappeared and
they ended up on graveyards
uh in china
and uh yeah para city or we call
this add-on para city gallery this was
just
sort of our way to interact with the
scooters and then
see if like they will run into a say
in the into a similar faith maybe
yeah so yeah in our sort of research or
our journey um we
we mainly used uh like looked at the api
um and sort of reverse engineered some
apps to
to gain some more knowledge about this
whole ecosystem
but of course you can also look at the
economic models of these companies you
can
go to crunchbase website and and see who
invest in what and and who buys who
um you can follow me there is a
connection between word and tier in the
end
maybe you will find that on crunch base
and of course there's a very uh
language of marketing that's being
deployed by these companies
and very interesting terms of services
and privacy statements where you
will actually easily discover that
yeah most of the the eco-friendliness is
is
mostly outsourced to to third parties um
for example the recycling of tears is
done by deutsche recycling
their co2 goals are offset by
climatepartner.com
and yeah as speedy mentioned this
this whole space here is it's it's also
not owned by it here it's it's
another contractor on a contractor on a
contractor creating
um yeah um a lot of small small jobs
uh in this blockchain it's basically
already laid out to be a very
momentarily it seems that all of this is
very
yeah just uh during the
the pandemic you would see within weeks
uh
whole hospital hospitals will be created
and this
sort of uh seems a lot like this this is
just a pop-up hospital
for scooters and um it'll exist as long
as scooters exist
and as soon as they're like they have
evolved to the next
version of the micro mobility
this will be something else again
exactly another thing you can do is uh
for example yeah um if you do want to do
some non-destructive
um armchair reverse engineering you can
go to the fcc database
ssc.io and um
yeah look try to see if if um
the electronics are registered there and
mostly you can find pictures of the
actual electronics that are
inside of these uh equipment
um yeah so the fcc is the the american
sort of um radio watchdog
taking care of the spectrum emissions
and there's also there's also the
way to do something similar to
what we did um decompiling
all of the available apps to find a
little
new entry points as we said the the api
key that we
um used was previously discovered by
someone who did
just the same he decompiled the trap and
he found this api key just hard
coded in there and we found out that
there are different
types of api keys out there there are
the ones that
the users will use so if you're on an
app on official tier app you'll use a
different api key than
the one that we are using because for
example on the tier app you'll be able
to
bring a scooter and like have them blink
in the street to be more easily located
that's for example something
that we couldn't do with our key um and
there is more to be discovered
in within these apps and also as we said
the
the other apps that exist from from
these sharing
companies another entry point is the
the physical scooter itself
yeah you can notice that on the bottom
there's often
a large amount of stickers
a lot of times it contains the fcc id
where you can look up the electronics
inside
but also like the the original
manufacturer of these
things which are mostly i believe come
to come from china and um
yeah if you know like okay the
manufacturing way
if you know the manufacturer and the
model uh you can look for
like uh service manuals or
manuals in general and get to know some
of the
more features of these devices
for example on the models of scooters
you can see here
there's a little um black bar uh at the
front
um on the top of it there's a
there's a sort of eye with the led in it
um but some of the the
um i have to say some of the manuals
actually
um provide a little indication of an
optional camera to be built in so maybe
that's the next step of the
evolution um that these
sort of scooters can uh you know observe
themselves and their
environments
um yeah so these were the ways we we
thought of like approaching this um
and we sort of now want to ask you like
um or offer you a little hand in
how you could possibly approach this
um yeah earlier this year we
did a workshop um around this
topic um in because
in stuttgart and we um
basically we had already uh come up with
this concept of ours this concept of the
roaming speed show
and well we were sure that this single
air this
single entry point of the charging pad
this this option
for free um electricity
um it could be like our our way of using
it is just the
one little like possibility that
is out there and we were doing this
workshop we
actually um had a couple of
wooden adapters made that would also
snugly fit into the
into the smartphone
holder with the g coil and
it would allow the participants of our
workshop to create their own add-ons to
to see for possibilities
for themselves to sort of
um increase the
the value of these scooters to them
personally
because we found that a lot of people
were criticizing these scooters simply
because
the solution that they that the the
micro mobility industry um said that
they were
they were this this beautiful climate
neutral solution to
a mobility problem that
existed in in urban areas
we found that this solution this
scooter solution to a lot of them
doesn't
exist it's it's it's useless these
scooters are useless they are not
solving this
this problem for a large part of the
people and we were just thinking
okay so if these scooters are here to
stay and what is the only good thing
that they
can offer well it's a large
infrastructure
and it's free energy for some of them at
least and
we invited participants of our workshop
to
um just think of more ways other than
the
gallery at all think of more ways to um
engage with the scooter and increase
well usability or just
value of these scooters
pcb is that we created for the
um for the gallery is just put inside
the wooden block
and um instead of powering this wifi
chip
you could just use the power to power
whichever other
um um device you want
um in this case a toothbrush for i don't
know
free charging up two toothbrushes
on the street forever that is
a thing a theme
it's the new thing i heard it's the new
thing
i heard i heard too
yeah so um in the end here we basically
want to
take the same approach we want to invite
everybody um
to maybe think of uh solutions
themselves
maybe think of um a way of communicating
with the scooters themselves
to just get a better understanding of
the industry
of the way the industry works and the
way
we can actually benefit we
as the general public because obviously
a lot of the stuff from these scooters
is is actually not for the public or
at least not for the general public
and um we invite you to actually think
of
um hacks uh
add-ons modifications word um
that um that will for you
solve this uh self solve a
problem um we have created this
github where we share
um a couple of nice goodies
with you guys
yeah so we're actually intentionally
not sharing um our
sort of original wi-fi uh modules
schematics and code
because we think that can be found in
berlin still
we share all of the information on the
gallery
add-on if you actually go to berlin find
our scooter that we um provided
in the open coil show and
yeah you can log on to the wi-fi and
download all the schematics there
but this is something different
yeah the url for that you can actually
find on on github
on the at the url you see above and
now our server will die
yeah hopefully not um
yeah so on the on the github you'll find
like
plans um how to modify
like cheap cheap adapters to work
with these cheat coils you will find a
positive mold for vacuum forming your
own
adapter that's 3d printable
and you will find the the wooden block
that's
uh either laser cuttable or
cc-able um yeah this is really nice
because there's
holes and you can just you know use a
hammer and
and some nails to to to mount whatever
you want on this
um yeah maybe to to sort of wrap up
this kind of technical talk
in some ways um this is of
of course not a purely purely technical
project by
uh to brilliant artists
um this this project is is you know
running for half a year now
um it's uh it's like an accumulation of
social contacts and trends and um
spaces but also knowledge that has has
been
um you know um
be been exchanged over over at least 10
years time
um so it's it's actually a very very
big social part in this project um
yeah and in the same way i think we
believe that
um also just dropping technology on the
streets
isn't gonna solve like uh social issues
or in fair environmental issues um
and yeah we want to sort of connect with
you and
try to think of yeah try to think of
other ways to do this
to actually um yeah
make something make a difference in in
this industry
um because i think um there are enough
um
possibilities enough entry points enough
front doors
really um to to engage with the scooters
to like find out
stuff about them yeah and
and to sum this up yeah we just want to
give uh in the end we want to give a
shout out to
all the participating artists like
everyone who
um was like immediately on board
providing uh incredible artworks
for us to present on our modified
scooters
um we are very very overwhelmed
that like just that so many
artists were even like uh considering
participating it was really overwhelming
and we
um wanna like give a huge thanks to to
everybody who
um worked with us on that we we also
want to mention
uh centromesconst who
hosted our opening um event especially
teresa she
did a lot of work for us um
and yeah all of this just wouldn't would
have been possible without um
this community of of artists and
just random friendly people who um
helped us
with with this um thanks
and thanks to the ccc for hosting us
thank you um let's go to q
a let's go to q a go to get up
download our stuff hack some scooters
find
solutions to problems that's so nice of
you thank you so much
it's been a real yeah totally new
perspective on on these uh strange
little things that's crowding all the
streets everywhere
even if i already fought um what about
cars the cars need much more space maybe
that's another idea
yeah and they're just much more
difficult to hack we found
and yeah maybe maybe we should have
an outside tag but i just wanted to say
um
we're very sorry we had some problems
with the with the audio
um in between it wasn't too much but
um still very very sorry for that
and um unfortunately we can also not
um guarantee that it's gonna be better
on the media cccde
but it was still okay um you know in
germany
it's all still newland so
maybe maybe we just need to be a little
bit patient
um let me just uh jump in here and um
repeat once more uh the github address
that's
github.com slash speedy minus scooty
slash open coil
and while we're at it we're very happy
if you
would also give feedback for the um
for the talks you can do that in the uh
far plan um not in the blinky fancy app
um uh in the normal
far plan and there's a feedback link and
you can tell us what's been good what
hasn't been good
um of course we know there's sometimes
technical problems but
i already heard that the target show
which is our biggest news show on
germany
public television they even had to
stop their show today because of
problems so we're not the only ones
we're not alone and
yeah we have
a lot of questions and finally we also
have a lot of time
so um i hope
that we're ready now to maybe switch
to these questions let me just check
that
okay
so first one about
maybe they clustered for for different
topics
maybe you want to choose a topic first
um about the project in general
about the implant um about the api about
the hardware about
off topic what what are you going to
start with off topic
off topic honestly sure
of course are you aware of any backup
doors
back doors with these scooters
not really i mean we're not even sure
that
what we have found is actually a bug we
we've just found this open coil
um that gives out free energy and
we're not sure if that's a bug or a
feature actually so
i mean yeah it's it's a feature in a way
that um yeah
you're like allowed to charge your phone
um when you rent it
so yeah yeah maybe there's someone in
the audience who can
sort of enlighten us about this
maybe please drop a note on twitter
um with the hashtag rc2
rc32 sorry um
yeah uh or on irc
and next off topic question how did you
do this awesome presentation
i know
oh green screen
thank you yeah it's been it's been nice
to go outside while not going outside
okay next topic yeah yeah it was like
the only way that we could be together
and yeah yeah true yeah it's it's nice
to see
yeah i know what you mean uh hardware
implant api
or project
you choose oh
api api
is this api still open yes
yes please don't close it we want to do
this show another time another
place please please don't close it
or you take the next car project
remember
okay what are the most interesting funny
unusual
things that you have seen with the api
oh that's a very good question
uh there were some some funny
um repair statuses like
uh destroyed or something
yes some were really obviously pointing
towards the commission
highly decommissioned highly highly
decommissionable
yeah yeah just the general stuff that we
figured out oh okay so
apparently the scooter that was in
berlin two days ago
is now in marseille this this alone was
a
a weird coincidence and then i don't
know if you've noticed but
um the during the screen recording of
our website you could actually see that
currently one of the 11 scooters we
chose
to host our add-ons moved all the way to
potsdam which is also definitely outside
of
service area and as far as we can tell
there it's not another workshop it's
just a residential area
and um maybe someone uh check it out
yeah maybe okay
total the have you seen any interesting
moving patterns
on other than the trip to the repair
facility okay we have that
i guess um okay maybe we go to implant
now
is that okay or harder sure
okay so uh sorry if it was already said
how expensive is the implant
if you buy it in bulk it's it's around
five euros i would say okay
yeah it depends it really depends on on
like
the scale you want to do this obviously
we bought a bunch of
uh esps and stuff we because as we
mentioned
before we we were expecting these things
to launch
to not last as long as they they did and
um we bought a bunch of them so um
we got them for very reasonable but
also we had some ish issues um with
delivery on time
um out of like china obviously
doing due to corona in a way
so we had to last minute switch to uh
to a more local uh supplier and
this supplier like he only had these
these uh these adapters that you would
plug into smartphones all the
smartphones that that don't
have wireless qi capability so we just
ordered a bunch of these adapters and
then we
like took them apart and just like
we just like took the parts we needed
and they and they didn't work
yeah at first they didn't work we had to
like
look at a picture of the the version of
this hardware component that we
previously had and we realized oh just
by comparing
the two pictures we realized oh there
are like two more components on this
board
and we we just soldered them off and
then bridged uh like two
pins and then they worked again so there
was a lot of
um weird quirky like uh
sort of hacks that we had to uh um had
to do just
to um get the get the modules working in
time
and obviously if you're like
if you're on this tight schedule then um
things might get more expensive but
yeah yeah it's already five years versus
money
um did the technicians find any of your
implants
yeah as far as we know they didn't
or maybe they took them to pottstown
uh maybe yeah maybe maybe
maybe we go to harper before we come
back to the project in general
i think the hardware of some of these
devices is open source do you have an
idea where to find a plan to copy it
um i guess the devices are originally
attached
i saw i didn't get the last part
and that's a that's another comment um
that's uh
belongs to it uh i guess the device is
originally attached
no
charging the charging pads the charging
pads they are attached to the scooters
they just come with the scooter and as
we said in our presentation you can try
to
like go through fcc's website or
just look at the serial number and and
fcc
numbers on the scooters themselves to
find out more about the hardware that's
inside these the scooters and inside the
charging pad that is attached to the
scooter
when it comes to our hardware um
that the the gallery module that we
attached to the scooters
that um we we haven't we did
made it we did make it publicly
available but only
if you find our scooter in berlin
and log on to its network and download
the contents we will not share it
online ever it's gonna be offline
on a scooter in berlin for as long as
the scooter exists
okay why didn't you just open the
battery pack to get
voltage and place the module there
um this is i don't know
um i think uh these batteries run on 42
volts or something
uh yeah and also we were about to find a
hack that's
non-destructive we we had already seen
all of this destructive
criticism uh of these scooters we've
only already seen what
uh how people um in general react
to these when they don't like them and
we just wanted to find a more clever way
of of dealing with it and
um there are probably a lot of
possibilities to
gain access to the power or or
even other features of this um these
scooters and
uh you're free to do uh modifications on
scooters yourselves but
we for this project we wanted to look
for a
stealthy non-destructive non-invasive
parasite that would just extend
the capabilities of the scooter without
interfering with
with its uh original business model
yeah yeah
you could try uh mounting like a bicycle
dynamo on the wheels maybe
oh yeah
yeah why not um okay
anything else you want to add to the
technical
specifics
okay then project in general what are
the reasons to decide to make the
gallery available for only a few days
i'm not sure uh if
if this maybe was a misunderstanding but
um
no it's sort of a sort of understood
correctly
the show uh the open call show it only
ran for a week in berlin
that is due to um
one uh one reason was that we
just didn't imagine this this module to
last that long
and we didn't find out until long after
the show
that it would actually survive a trip to
the warehouse
so after a week we thought okay
this is just too too much work because
as we said we were
really like on our bikes every night
checking on these modules checking on
these scooters it was a lot of work and
um yeah this was just not we could keep
this
sort of um we couldn't we couldn't be a
sharing company for
forever
yeah maybe maybe i don't know maybe
there's another way to
document it in some some way or so
well now that we know that these modules
are way more durable than we imagined
we um as we said we are thinking of or
we definitely want to
um repeat this show
in another time another city because
the good thing about these scooters they
are everywhere now and um as far as we
can tell this uh
solution that we came up with it works
in every city
so um you're
we also hope that we can repeat this
somewhere else
some other time and maybe um
[Music]
have it be available longer or actually
for as long as
they will last
yeah are there plans to make roaming
galleries of
on other types of infrastructure like
cars
um or in general what
um what are you planning to do you have
any plans
what you want to do with it in the
future is there anything
coming up
that's a very very tough question
now first we go for the cars maybe we
can do like a like a project where
people
can join in freely
there have been like like many
historical examples of
you know uh you know public free
shared infrastructures and um
a lot of art projects as well for about
netherlands
uh for example by dania varzeliev
using the the subway
carriages to carry about like mesh
network routers
um we had this tram gem
project that used trams as musical
sequencers
and very nice projects uh so
something i can imagine is maybe like a
collaboration with freifunk
uh providing mesh wi-fi mesh nodes
on roaming devices um but yeah
it's really hard to sort of uh see the
future in in
times like this yeah maybe you should go
out and find them
out there and just have it go out and
find them is
in the rc2 world and chat about it
um one of our live stream chatters
uh just shouted to please share the api
key
so
i know yay is there
maybe um if there's more questions or
interest
is there maybe a place an assembly or a
special bar where you're hanging around
later on or tomorrow here at the rc2
world um
i'll see now yeah you know what i mean
like you're out there
yeah yeah actually
i would like to hang out in the hardware
hacking area
of the the workshop area in the in the
world
it's a nice space um
yeah maybe you can type the api key
there i mean
copy paste it it's a bit long to to you
know mention it here
it will take all night
okay uh obviously this question is
very interesting so they keep keep
putting it back so have you seen any
interesting
moving patterns other than the trip to
the repair facility
seems to be very important so what have
you what have you been
finding well out was just
interesting to see um
[Music]
from what we could tell by looking at
these 11 scooters
specifically we um well
they were mostly uh being
moved uh during the night or like
uh evening morning um times and not so
much during the day
they some of the scooters we uh selected
they've never
they've never moved out of nikon one
scooter didn't move
a single time during the whole time we
we watched it and others made uh really
long trips
as you could see in the animation there
uh one was
like going crazy towards bedding and
then um
meeting kobe pitnik scooter was just
like after one day it was in shallow
book and
like alone
yeah one one interesting thing is uh for
me was
that um the the rangers or the juicers
the people who swapped the butter
batteries
um yeah like
at the night of the opening um
you know a couple of our scooters
actually ran out of battery
um that's when we decided to end the
show and
yeah within uh five minutes there was
this
sixth rental car uh arriving
with a dude jumping out swapping the
batteries
um yeah with the perfect the perfect
ending to our show we had just removed
the
the modules we had just saved them and
then these like
guys jump out the this van and then
swap batteries on the scooters and like
nobody believed that we didn't actually
plan this that it wasn't like a like a
theater piece but it
it was just a nice coincidence one of
the many
coincidences that made this project um
happen in the first place um
i just have to laugh because we always
say with berliners we don't leave
our kids you always stay in your kids so
maybe some of the uh the scooters had
the same
um approach to just stay yeah
excuse me yeah you're
absolutely right the scooters seem to
have adapted a very similar lifestyle
yeah yeah
okay there are still more questions are
you still willing to take
questions sure sure okay
cool would you consider doing some work
around the badly parked scooters for
people who are blind or visually
impaired
did you notice this issue while doing
this project
uh do you have to repeat that question
huh um he's asking
and those scooters are parked everywhere
very badly and it's a
it's a dangerous blind or visually
impaired
and you probably noticed it and
maybe you could add this as
um as an aspect or
yeah definitely there's that's one of
the the many things that we um
invite people to like um
maybe uh look out for to
i mean there are a bunch of people
listening who are way more talented than
we are in
um all sorts of uh coming up
uh with code and and and
um ideas and development uh ideas
uh to create add-ons for these scooters
and obviously there are there are
problems with these scooters that we
didn't even think about
we just tried to find one solution that
would make them more interesting to us
and obviously um there
there's a need for for improvement on
many levels and
um yeah using using this
uh charger maybe there's a way to like
mount a sensor on top that would
then like give a um sound
feedback to once you're approaching them
or something
um we haven't thought of anything like a
boy or something yeah
yeah well thank you so much um at the
hardware acting hacking area
and the um playground area i don't i
don't repeat that now
um you're scooby and speedy there too
it's goody and speed
yeah it's the same name you're walking
around recognition
no no then you have to find a way to
make yourself remarkable in some way
well you can also always drop us an
email at
mail at opencoil.show
um it's probably gonna get flooded now
and maybe it'll take a while until we
can
respond but it'll get to us eventually
okay so thanks so much that was it
thank you yeah
enjoy the program and have a good time
thank you everybody and thank you for
being here speedy scooty
have fun bye bye bye bye bye bye
bye
[Music]
ah
you