An Electric Scooter Community on a Mission to Stamp out Transportation Mediocrity.

Discuss the Segway Ninebot ES and Ninebot Max Kick Scooter in this Forum. Topics include the Segway-Ninebot app, hardware, street riding, etc.
#12402
This information is for those who have legitimately and legally acquired a rental Ninebot scooter. If your is stolen or if you stole one, Please press ALT+F4 for more information.

Method ONE: (the easy way)
Replace the dashboard and controller module with OEM parts. The cost is around $100 for the real parts and there's lots of EBAY sellers who are falsely claiming their stuff is legit. You have to disassemble the mast to replace the controller and it's sort of a pain to do so. Plenty of youtube fodder on Ninebot disassembly. The whole process should take a couple hours for the first timer. This should work for Bird, Jump, Lyft and several others.

Earlier this year, you could just buy a $20-25 clone dashboard and replace on the Birds. They pushed out a Over-The-Air update a couple months ago which gimps the scooter's control board if the Bird dashboard is changed out. Even OEM dashboards don't work on Bird gimped controllers. The dashboard AND the controller need to be replaced using this method.

Method TWO: (the inexpensive way)
Flash the Controller board and the dashboard with aST-LinkV2 USB programming dongle. The dongle is $5 and the software is free. No need for pricey OEM dashboard since it's not hard to convert cheap clone to OEM . There's lots of incomplete documentation on this site and others how to do this. There's youtube videos on how to flash the dashboard that shows soldering. For those who don't have soldering skillz or want to do multiple scooters, there's ways to build jigs to get the same result. The actual flashing process only takes a minute. The disassembly is the same as method #1, annd the flashing time for the experienced is probably only about fifteen minutes. It took me about ten hours the first time to figure all this out.

You can use the existing stock components on the scooters that have the GPS tacked on like Jump, Etc. For the Birds and Lyft, you can flash the $20 clone dashboards and the original control boards to be OEM. Lyft and Jump scooters also need to have the dashboard connector cable re-located on the controller board.

Method THREE: (the hardcore and cheapest way)
Replace the controller board with a cheap chinese controller board. The generic controller boards are as cheap as $10 from ali express, etc. The cheapies don't have a dashboard, battery guage, lights, etc. This method can also be done without soldering, but realistically, there will be some wire soldering involved. Wire soldering is a shitload easier than trying to solder stuff to dinky PCB's.

This method will work on most any scooter including other brands since the controller is wired directly to the raw components - Motor, brakes, throttle, battery, etc. The controller probably needs to be mounted outside the shaft but thankfully Jump and some others already have an external box for the GPS that can be used.

My suspicion is that the Ninebots will become scarce by the end of the year just like how the M365's have become now. Most of the major players have already shifted towards a 2nd generation solution. The Bird One™ are now close to 25% of the population in my market in less than a month.

Ninebots are also crap scooters. They were not designed to be in rental fleets. The extra battery on the ES4 is just f**king janky. Little 8" hard plastic wheels do not bode well against 2" sidewalk elevation gaps. The important screws seem to wiggle out and escape. No mechanical brake - stoopid back wheel fender doesn't count. Top heavy, Kickstand is a joke, etc..

Hopefully we can move on and start discussing the 2nd generation scooters more. All the major players have 2G scooters with better motors and battery placement on the streets or arriving soon.

Ninebot sux .
#12407
Thank you Freebird.
Ive been keeping it to myself for a long time now, but I never got what people saw in the Ninebot scooters. I wont bother to state why I dont like them...you already hit the nail on the head, man. There has been so much time and energy spent on hacking something that really just plain sucks. I think people just obsess over things that they can get at a steep discount (or for many people, free). I swear people would grab at a piece of dog sh*t if someone was giving it away for free. I can see the forum topic now: How to convert dog sh*t to a delicious meal. HAhaha
Anyway, if this forum offers a badge award for keeping it real, you deserve it homie. Carry on.
#12408
Nima Jafari wrote:
Fri Jul 05, 2019 3:33 am
Cant you get away with just replacing the dash on the Bird variant?
Not anymore. You have to flash or replace the controller on the Bird Ninebots. :cry:

I used to have big dreams of disrupting this gig economy by sitting outside the urban hipster food-n-beer halls and offering rental scooter "enhancements" to the passers-by for $100. Just bring me a scooter and I'll swap out the Bird head with a $20 clone dashboard. I figure I could easily do at least 6 an hour and that would be a decent hourly wage. Now that the controller and dash both need to be flashed, each one would take an hour on average. :cry: Too much work for too little hourly money. :cry:
#12548
kykyfang wrote:
Sun Jul 07, 2019 4:13 am
225 wrote:
Sat Jul 06, 2019 2:14 pm
Any links to proven controllers and dashboards that work?
Go on eBay and search up ScooterClone. Trusted seller, got an OEM M365 dash and OEM Ninebot ES Dash from him. Two day shipping, he ships out of LA. Good prices for OEM parts too.
ScooterClone isn't on eBay. I did a search here, nothin.
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