The world's first Cowboy key-fob
Last year I got my Cowboy 3 e-bike and I love it. Every day I start riding the bike it feels great, it makes cycling even better than it already is. My only gripe is unlocking the bike with the app, which takes about 15 seconds. This post is about how I built a BLE powered 3 button key that unlocks my bike, and the physical key unlocks the battery. Here it is in action: Is it faster? Maybe. But cool? Definitely. But why? tldr: It doesn't make sense, but I learned a lot and it was fun. I used the official Cowboy app with a cheap Android phone (Moto G7 Play) and also an my wife's iPhone SE (both first and second gen). On the iPhones the Bluetooth works a lot better, once the app opens it's almost instant. But: unlocking takes about 15 seconds: taking your phone out of your pocket while you're fiddling with the lock (7s), finding the app (3s), opening it (3s), unlocking (2s). If you do this 2 times a day for 365 days it will take 3 hours. So, I decided to spend a week and...