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Raspberry Pis Found In Abandoned Spin Scooters In Seattle 55

Posted by BeauHD from the finder's-keepers dept.
When Spin ceased operations of its scooter rental service in Seattle, abandoned scooters were found throughout the city, each housing a Raspberry Pi 4B. Tom's Hardware reports: This discovery was recently shared to social media where Pi enthusiasts are simultaneously befuddled and ready to book their tickets to Seattle. Legally speaking, if the scooters are abandoned then snagging one for the Pi inside is fair game but it's currently not clear if Spin has plans to recover their remaining assets.

As of writing, it's not clear what the Raspberry Pi 4 Bs were actually used for inside the scooter. At first glance, it seems like an overpowered option for something like an electric scooter but without exact confirmation of its purpose, we can only speculate. No doubt it requires much more power than something smaller like a Raspberry Pi Zero. In the meantime, residents have taken to finding these scooters and exploring their insides for the hardware left behind. We can see the Pi 4 is attached to a HAT and has something resembling a NoIR connected to the camera module port. Again, the exact purpose of each component and how it was implemented is unclear.
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Raspberry Pis Found In Abandoned Spin Scooters In Seattle More

Raspberry Pis Found In Abandoned Spin Scooters In Seattle

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  • Well as the saying goes. (Score:4, Informative)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Monday August 07, 2023 @08:51PM (#63749074)

    One man's trash, another man's free computer.

    And Pi 4 are pretty good at basic browser stuff.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      I don't know about the scooters and their innards besides the fact that they have RP4 in them, but it seems like a complete waste to remove the Pi and junk the rest. Obviously there exists all the mechanism to make a scooter out of the damn thing. If I found one, either I'd turn it back into a scooter, or come up with another gadget to make out of the whole thing. Or are they just the bicycle that's pictured in the first link?

    • Unless you want to watch a Youtube video in said browser.

      • Ah yeah, the browser with YouTube is shite. But it's mostly browser issue as none actually implement hw accel on pi. You can easily yt-dlp the videos @ 1080p and run them in vlc just fine. But yes, if youtube is the destination best to keep the videos at 720p max, which sucks since the pi 4 can drive a 4k monitor pretty easily. So yes, your point rings very true.

        I love pis but they aren't my favorite SBCs because of the poor optimization and the closed blobs needed to get them running, the RISC-V offeri

  • News is maybe 1 - 2 months too later for this to be a goldrush, but there is still enough value in parts that might be able to be scavenged to make it worth someone's time to go around and harvest a bunch (if they are nearby).

    I just received two Pi Zero 2 boards from a local shop, which seemed to be stock for the first time in years (Pi Zero and Zero 2 never seemed to have had good stoack in NZ).

  • wtf were they doing? (Score:3)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Monday August 07, 2023 @09:17PM (#63749102) Homepage
    Overpowered? More juice than a Pi Zero? (You don't say). Don't they have Pico or Nano or some incredibly small, low powered shit now at a few dollars per board? How many scooters are we talking about? A Pi 4 just seems massively over spec unless they're crunching data from the camera. What size sd cards do they have?

    • Re:wtf were they doing? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quenda ( 644621 ) on Monday August 07, 2023 @09:55PM (#63749170)

      $5 retail will get a ESP32-CAM - with wifi, BLE, sd-slot and camera included. Enough compute power for a lunar lander, let alone a scooter.
      There must be some reason they went with an expensive Pi4? Aside from fun burning investor money.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        I could understand the Pi 4B if the scooters had some sort of full colour display or something, but they don't. Just a two digit seven segment and a bunch of indicator LEDs. There's literally nothing going on there, as far as I can tell, that you couldn't do with an ESP32 or Pi Pico (they're ballpark equivalent). And even if they were doing something that was difficult to do with a microcontroller, maybe interfacing with the GPS module or something, the Pi Zero is pretty similar in price to the ESP32 or Pi

        • The PI is likely to tie in GPS tracking so they can find the scooter and to enable geofencing to keep you from riding it outside of a designated riding area or entering areas that are no go zones. and GSM/LTE connectivity to unlock it when you unlock a ride on your phone and to monitor charge level so they know when they need to send someone out to pick it up for a charge. The Pi isn't driving the display on these, the scooter's controller does that. Most of the scooters used in these fleets are off the she

      • Best guess is that this was a marketing company first and foremost. Not an engineering company. They had a Big Idea and knew how to promote it, but not how to actually make it. So they hired some cheap inexperienced programmer who had messed around with an RPi a bit in school, and he used what he knew. To hell with the cost, the goal of the company wasn't to make money, it was to be bought out and make the owners rich.

        Mind you, I know absolutely nothing about this company. I'm just extrapolating from th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        One possibility is that they just wanted to get something out the door and their crappy code wouldn't run fast enough on a Zero.

        The more likely possibility is that they were doing something shady with the camera.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They probably wanted to develop the system fast, with the developers they had. Making it work on a cheaper system adds up front cost to get the code optimized down to that level.

    • It makes a lot more sense if you remember that app-connected rental scooters were a good sized VC-fueled fad.

      They could have put in the extra effort to do things efficiently and drive the BoM cost of each scooter down as far as possible; or they could actually have something on the street before the market became oversaturated and/or interest dried up entirely.

      Since they've apparently just abandoned the market and the hardware their choice clearly didn't work out for them; but it wouldn't be at all su

  • Just dropping this public service announcement: look at Orange Pi and Banana Pi as great and more powerful alternatives to the Raspberry Pi (not to mention far more obtainable and less expensive).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      Looks comparable price and stats to the Raspberry Pi. Might be good if you can't get an rpi, but the hardware support is pretty solid for rpis

  • Dockless garbage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday August 07, 2023 @09:37PM (#63749126)

    I know this form of micro-mobility is good news for the environment - at least it looks like it, considering the number of cars those scooter seem to displace. But...

    In my home town, there are 4 or 5 companies spreading those things all over the city. When I go to the swimming pool, the entire 200 yd sidewalk it cluttered with those bright green eyesores to such an extent that wheelchairs can't pass. People abandon them everywhere, in the forest, upside down on roadside berms, in the city parks... and the operators don't come get them, so the city has to pay for cleanup.

    And worst of all, people dump them in the sea at the port and in the river. Environment enthusiast have been busy going into the water in wetsuits fishing those damn scooter out so the batteries don't leak heavy metals and kill the fish.

    Yes it's great that they reduce car traffic. But honestly, I am so tired of seeing those godawful machines everywhere they shouldn't be. At some point, I think cities should require dockless scooter operators to post a bunch of money to cover potential cleanup costs before they're even allowed to operate.

    Also, cities should start suring those companies that leave scooters lying around when recovering them costs more than simply abandoning them. Those things have GPS trackers in them: the companies know perfectly well where they are, or where they last were a few feet from were before they entered the water and stopped pinging.

    • Those things have GPS trackers in them: the companies know perfectly well where they are

      So easy people use it for luggage, even internationally.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      If these have proper GPS and account logging, they should know who had the bike and where they dumped it - the fine should go to the irresponsible rider.

      • Re:Dockless garbage (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dohzer ( 867770 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @12:40AM (#63749386)

        Call me crazy, but I've got a funny feeling that paying customers aren't the ones throwing rental bikes and scooters into the rivers.

        • It usually is teens and college aged 20 somthings doing this kind of shit. Though im sure it wouldn't be too hard for them to account for the fact that the last paying rider last rode it 2 hours ago before someone picked up the locked scooter and chucked it into the water. they would know exactly when that happened when they stopped getting pings from the scooter as all the electronics shorted out.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If these have proper GPS and account logging, they should know who had the bike and where they dumped it - the fine should go to the irresponsible rider.

        That's in essence how it already works in a legal sense.

        The scooter company is told to collect their property. They say no or ignore the request.
        The scooter company is fined for that failure.

        After that, the scooter company is free to pass that fine along.
        Presumably they know where the last paying customer left it, and if that is who dumped it, that's who the scooter company can charge.
        If it was moved afterwards, and not by a customer, well that's the scooter companies problem.

        Either way it isn't the govern

    • Re:Dockless garbage (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BeaverCleaver ( 673164 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2023 @03:00AM (#63749584)

      Where I live, we fixed (or at least, "improved" compared to the 1980s) the problem with abandoned shopping carts by making the supermarket that provided the carts liable for the abandoned carts. The supermarkets now have contractors cruising around the suburbs collecting abandoned carts. These don't have GPS tags in them and the contractors still manage to find them and collect them. It should be trivial for scooter operators to do he same. Cities just need to enforce existing statutes against littering or abandoned store property.

      I should also add that my city charges the scooter companies to operate. It should be fairly straightforward to either increase those charges (to cover the additional burden to the citizens) or just pull the scooter companies' licence for non compliance.

    • Hell froze over. You said something I fully agree with. Incidentally some cities are already fighting back. https://bikebiz.com/amsterdam-... [bikebiz.com] Amsterdam has already banned share bicycles which are dockless, and scooters are next on the chopping block.

      • Yes, we must keep the streets free for the stinking, dangerous private cars that kill thousands every year.
        That's the only way forward.

        • The reason appears to be to free up space for actual owner-bicycles, not cars. Share bikes (and scooters) do not have a home as such, and are semi-permanently taking up bicycle parking spots and random pedestrian areas.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by eepok ( 545733 )

      Dockless works if you're ready for it. If you can't handle a major portion of your population using bicycles legally, then you won't be able to manage a dockless bike/scooter system.

      The communities and campuses that waited until the venture-backed firms died off/were bought off are now offered significantly more useful features in their systems:

      1. Lock-to requirement. Device must be left and attached to a bike rack. (Photo required to end trip.)
      2. Escalating discipline for non-compliant parking. Warning, fo

    • The solution to this is to encourage private ownership of scooters.

      It's only the hired ones being left in crazy places and dumped, when people care about their investment they look after it and won't be so reckless.

      That we are in a situation in many places where private scooters are illegal to use but these hired ones are left everywhere is insane.

    • I saw the scooter business rise and fall over a few months in San Diego.

      I think what they need is an entirely different scooter design, one smart enough to go home by itself, recharge and go someplace where it is needed.

      Interesting engineering challenge.

  • I'm shocked that a company that uses RPi in their scooters went out of business.

  • So an e-scooter rental company went bankrupt and they just left their scooters strewn across the city for anyone to salvage?

    That's...kinda neat actually.

    • These scooters get so abused by the riding public that they generally only have a 3-6month life span. Very likely a good portion of the fleet was already near the scrapping point, Why pay to scrap them when you can have prople that want to strip them down or convert them into private scooters handle that for you?

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