Repairing an Interesting E-Bike for Beics Ogwen

 It's Sunday morning and later I'm off to volunteer at my local repair cafe, reminded that I never wrote up this little repair story! A few years ago I used to volunteer every Friday for Beics Ogwen a local Beic hire/workshop/education project. Times changed and for various reasons the volunteering aspect of it stopped. 

Recently I've taken on a new office near Beics Ogwen and my mate Morgs is running the project. We were chatting over a brew and looking at the invariable collection of stuff a project like that accrues, when I spotted an older ebike in a partial state of neglect. 

 

It caught my eye as it had some interesting parts on it and is a wild looking step through frame. It has a Nexus 7 speed hub on the back and the hub motor is in the front wheel. It's 36V and generally looked in good order. Morg explained that the battery refused to take a charge and additionally... the key to remove the battery from the rear rack frame was missing.  

I was pretty sure that the battery was too flat to take a charge. The Battery Management Systems (BMS) in e-bikes have rules and one rule is that if cells in the battery go below a safe discharge threshold (often around 2.5V per cell) then the BMS will refuse to allow the potentially damaged battery to charge.  

 Whilst discharging a cell to below 2.5V can cause damage to the cell, often, and particularly in my humble opinion if the cell has just been sat in a reasonable environment for a few years discharging very slowly, often there is little damage and they can be revived.  But... the battery needed to be stripped...

 

I LOVE LOCKSPORT and it's not a crime! So yes I broke out the lockpick set and made short work of the lock on the battery compartment of the rack. For those in the know I approached this with a very thick tension wrench and a ball pick. It picked so easily I then relocked it and picked it with a simple Bogota rake. These locks are definitely a deterrent and not hugely complex or secure. 

 

With the battery out of the frame I took it to my workbench and removed the casing. This meant I could then multimeter across all the individual cells. They were all incredibly flat! There are two options to begin to revive the cells. Basically both options are to charge the cells with a constant current limit set to a very low amount. The better but slower way is to supply 100mA to each individual cell aiming for say 3V, but you can also sometimes, if all the cells are behaving, supply the whole battery system with a constant current to bring the whole collection of cells to over 25V. Both these options are dangerous... don't do this if you don't know what you are doing! You definitely need to be constantly giving the system your attention, checking for any significant changes in temperature and appearance and also be ready to sling it all in a metal bucket and exit the building quickly should any magic smoke begin to appear.  

 

A couple of hours later and the cells had been warmed through and the whole pack was sat at around 29V. This meant that the BMS would allow the battery to charge from the charger once more. A quick reassembly of the pack and then a long charge cycle ensued with the battery charging to full in around 7 hours but then taking a further 5 hours to balance the cells. It should be quicker to charge on subsequent charges. 

 

Putting the battery back in the frame I was delighted that the system came to life, some air in the tyres, a tweak of the gear cable and it was ready. I took it for a few test rides and, with some big caveats, it's riding as it should! It's fair to say that this bike is great on the flat, zippy even! However both the older design of assist, the very sit up and beg riding position and the Nexus gearing makes this bike very undergeared for hills! It's deffo not that useful for riding the sides of the Ogwen valley! However, it would ABSOLUTELY suit someone who lives somewhere with a flatish route they do regularly, or, if someone is living on a narrowboat and does a lot of towpath riding, it would be perfect! Whatever it's future, I'm glad I got it serviceable again. If you might be interested in this bike it's for sale at Beics Ogwen, hit them up with an offer!  

 

 

FOSDEM 2026 photodump!

Little random photodump from FOSDEM 2026. For future me this is the one where I first volunteered as a Devroom manager co managing the Open Hardware CAD/CAM devroom with C Hennes. 

Our final talk was a love letter to the KiCad ERC... ace!

Yorik giving a great FreeCAD status update. 

Was really pleased to get more actual hardware stories on the stage, rather than all software for hardware stories. Arya and Lina.py gave a great presentation 

Ryan and his Blackpants story about making a flipper zero addon hat and then actually making an entire improved version of a flipper zero to run the hat!

 

Devroom Diva! 

 

 

 

My Four Thieves Vinegar Collective mascot came with me on the trip. 

FOSDEM AV team hardware. What legends. 

The elixir of eternal geek. 

 Super proud to have facilitated Manu bringing the Micro Manipulator project.

 

Libreoffice swag

Kosova peoples!

Forged in FreeCAD and KiCad stuff... Tanmatsu above and 1/1000th stonehenge below

 

 

Friets!

FreeCAD day compadres. 

Swag!

Brussels and awesome persian grub

Delirium... home of bad decisions

Dogtag. 

 

Kosovo trip 2025! Photodump and thoughts!

A while ago I got back from this amazing second visit to Kosovo. I first went out to Kosovo to speak at the Software Freedom Kosovo conference in 2019 when I was working for Libre Space Foundation. It’s been lovely to stay in touch with the team there, help out organise this years conference, and then attend and do a few talks, lectures and workshops. Of course it's also very fun to socialise and hang with a global cross section of the open source culture scene.

The SFK conference was held over 2 days, but I don’t like to travel/fly without maximising my usefulness these days so we extended my program with some days giving lectures and visiting local tech companies. I gave a general lecture about my work and opensource at FIEK to a group of ICT undergraduates, I gave more specific lectures on designing for opensource and OSHWA certification to UBT Mechatronics undergraduates as well as a similar lecture to some Masters students in Computer Sciences.

Over the conference I gave a long workshop each day with Saturday being an “Introduction to FreeCAD for CAD beginners” and on the Sunday a run through “Designing a PCB for fabrication with KiCad.” Also on the Sunday I gave a keynote address “Outside the Locked Box, Why opensource IS innovation”. 

 

Between all of this I got to hang with brilliant friends old and new. Lis and the crew at Prishtina hackerspace know not only how to do hospitality, but also how to brew amazing beers and distil amazing raki. Conversation flows, in Kosovo you are never far away from a friendly but passionate talk about politics and history. I made some amazing new friends and contacts whilst here. In particular a couple of young volunteers at the Hackerspace, Jona and Jora who were so great to hang out with. 

As I write this my attention is slightly pulled to the next conference, FOSDEM, on which I am doing a little voluntary work as a dev room manager, but I look forward to picking up with the FSK team as and when to support next years conference. Oh and if you are into opensource or open culture… get out to Kosovo for this. It’s a fabulous event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOURCE ISSUE 3 Out Now! Open Hardware theme!

 

Indeed! It's that time again, I'm incredibly pleased to say that SOURCE issue 3 is out now. This issue's theme is Opensource Hardware and there are tutorials on FreeCAD and KiCad, two giants in the open hardware development world! Rounded out with an Inkscape tutorial that complements the KiCad and a tutorial on how to get your project certified as opensource by OSHWA you have everything you need to make some cool open hardware! 

 As ever SOURCE is pay as you feel, there are donation links peppered through the PDF, please do donate if you can, each issue represents many many days of work. However, if you aren't in a position to donate, much love and solidarity to you, I hope you enjoy reading SOURCE. You can download the PDF either via the Github repository, or it's on a Google Drive here. 

Enjoyed appearing on the OSHWA Monthly Show and Tell

 

 

Last week I was invited to take part in the Open Source Hard Ware Association (OSHWA) monthly Show and Tell Livestream. The monthly show and tell tends to gather a few people from the previous months batch of OSHWA certified projects to chat about the project and more. I'd certified my Magnetic PCB Clamps design which is a small tool I designed which, as well as being a handy and versatile tool, is also a beginners FreeCAD tutorial in the upcoming SOURCE issue 3 magazine. 

Anyhoo, I had a fab time with Sid, lot's of laughter but also lots of heart warming discussion of why open hardware is the true way :) Thanks again to Sid and the team for having me.

A Wonderful Opensource Controller, for TOUV and more!

 

 

After building and testing the Tiny Opensource Underwater Vehicle (TOUV) one of the first real life opportunities to show it off was the excellent Liverpool Makefest. Held on July 5th this was the 8^th Makefest, but due to Covid, was celebrating 10 years of Makefest. It, as ever, was an excellent day. If you have no clue what I am on about, TOUV is available on a repo here, there is a video of it in underwater action on this post, and there's an article about it in the current issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

Back to Makefest, as a solo maker it’s hard to get around these events but close to my stand of rockets, robots, and of course, submarines, was the excellent DoEsLiverpool stand. In turn on that stand were the fabulous Chris Huffee and Snoof Kakkekop from Steam Engineers. Steam Engineers work tirelessly to make making and learning fun and accessible with a focus and specialism in working with neuro divergent young people. Chris and Snoof looked at TOUV and we reminisced a little about the early Makefest workshops with Lego Submarines. At the end of the day it seemed fitting to slip Steam Engineers a couple of TOUV kits I’d brought in case anyone was interested. What follows is a testament to the power of opensource!

A few weeks ago I got some messages that Steam Engineers were working on an opensource control board for TOUV that also could be used for all manner of different projects. I then met up with Chris and Snoof at another maker event in North Wales and Chris placed the amazing controller design in my hands! Chris has used KiCad to create a large custom PCB with a Raspberry Pi RP2350 powering the device, there’s a “Cheap Yellow Display” equivalent board plugged in and a couple of joysticks on board, with a neat FreeCAD design for large easy to grab 3D printed handles. Two Toshiba TB6612FNG motor driver IC’s are also included giving 4 channels of motor control. There’s a large LiPo on the back and it can be programmed and charge the LiPo via the USB C. Best of all Chris and Snoof have created a custom prototype firmware, booting the device, it not only shows a lovely playful display, it also provides differential thrust to the thrusters allowing for a much finer piloting experience.

 It's such a lovely thing when people build something in response to or as an addition to something you've made and it always, none more so than in this case, creates something greater than the sum of it's parts. Fab. 

FreeCAD Tetrapods!

I've seen a lot of Tetrapods recently... they seem perhaps to be the next Blåhaj having been spotted all over the #why25 hashtag. I'm imagining they'll be spotted out at FOSDEM and EMF camp next year... on searching though I couldn't find anyone explaining how to draw one up in your favourite opensource CAD FreeCAD! So, instead of concentrating on earning a decent living, I've spend some time this afternoon making this little video above about how to whip one up! 

Do give me a follow over on Makertube, it's a an excellent platform and I'm committed to putting content there in the future. Also feel free to hit that KoFi button to support my never ending nonsense (most of which doesnt pay!)