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KS16 downgrading firmware


Jimi00

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EDIT29/07 : Original post

    Hi all,

Does anybody know if there a way to downgrade the firmware on a KS16 ? 

I'm currently on v1.20 and I'd like to revert to v1.18 

 

Thanks in advance.

Regards.

 

EDIT29/07 : Update

If you don't want to read all pages in this post, here is a sum-up : i finally managed to downgrade my firmware on my KS16B.

I've finally decided to share directly here my HOWTO i've written for the occasion. Some of you has already successfully downgraded their wheel with this procedure. Here it is : 

FORCING A FIRMWARE DOWNGRADE ON KINGSONG KS16 WHEEL.pdf

IMPORTANT : You'll need a ***rooted*** smartphone

 

Disclaimer as a reminder : YOU DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BRICKED DEVICES OR THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO YOU OR YOUR DEVICES BECAUSE OF THIS DOWNGRADE!

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1 hour ago, Jimi00 said:

Does anybody know if there a way to downgrade the firmware on a KS16 ? 

I'm currently on v1.20 and I'd like to revert to v1.18

While I don't know how to downgrade the firmware I'm curious why you want to downgrade?  I've heard from a Thai euc friend something about the newer version putting a fixed speed limit at 25 km/h once the battery goes under 50%.  Is this true?  I guess it's a good safety feature but some people may not like it.

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5 minutes ago, John Eucist said:

the newer version putting a fixed speed limit at 25 km/h once the battery goes under 50%

That's exactly it, and what is dislike ! 

On a 680Wh battery, as i drive 30-40 kilometers everyday, such a restriction is just inconceivable for me :( 

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I have 1.18 installed on my KS16. I could copy the firmware and upload it here for you, if I knew how. :P

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Yes its true.....i wondered that i never discovered this before, so now i am sure it is the new firmware and i hate it too!

 

I also want to go back to 1.18 if this is possible....

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2 hours ago, edwin_rm said:

I have 1.18 installed on my KS16. I could copy the firmware and upload it here for you, if I knew how. :P

In my Android phone (Sony Xperia Z Ultra), the latest downloaded firmware file "16B.bin" is in directory /mnt/sdcard/kingsong/download/ , also named /sdcard/kingsong/download/ and /storage/sdcard0/kingsong/download/ . I'm with V1.20.

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1 minute ago, John Eucist said:

Is it possible to flash an old version over a newer version?

I would suppose so. But if the regular app can't do it thou, then maybe @fearedbliss or @esaj could modify the app to allow it to do so.

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Having a feature to prevent faceplants is a good feature. Having it based on a fixed speed only is not the best way but I appreciate it. I had a faceplants with my old IPS with a not fully charged battery,  

If customers would know more about torque/ power as a curve dependant on rpm, driving resistance they woul like that speed limiting feature. A low charged battery couldn't handle loads like a full/ nearly full charged battery.

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6 minutes ago, OliverH said:

Having a feature to prevent faceplants is a good feature. Having it based on a fixed speed only is not the best way but I appreciate it. I had a faceplants with my old IPS with a not fully charged battery,  

If customers would know more about torque/ power as a curve dependant on rpm, driving resistance they woul like that speed limiting feature. A low charged battery couldn't handle loads like a full/ nearly full charged battery.

There is no dispute about benefits of such feature however at its current state it seems a bit overkill IMO. Basing the fixed limit speed on half capacity of the battery without consideration of the battey size is not the best way as it affects negatively owners of the larger (680 / 840 Wh) batteries where the protectin kiks in way to early. It should be based on battery capacit and instead of hrd defined limit sudenly kicking in it shall gradually decrease the max speed. And while I appreciate that it might be tricky to detect batery size / capacit by firmware unless ome additional electronics is aded into battery and that if the battery size would be configurable via mobile app some people would by trying to avoid the limitation by purposely setting larger battey capacity than actually installed it would be still better than people avoiding new firmwares and additional security features alltogether.Finally while I personally find the 25 Km / h limit no problem as I hardly ever crusie over that speed anyway it's always good to have some speed reseve if needed in case of emergency where you might need brefly accelerate over such limit to avoid obstacle or colission etc.

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15 minutes ago, HEC said:

There is no dispute about benefits of such feature however at its current state it seems a bit overkill IMO. Basing the fixed limit speed on half capacity of the battery without consideration of the battey size is not the best way as it affects negatively owners of the larger (680 / 840 Wh) batteries where the protectin kiks in way to early. It should be based on battery capacit and instead of hrd defined limit sudenly kicking in it shall gradually decrease the max speed. And while I appreciate that it might be tricky to detect batery size / capacit by firmware unless ome additional electronics is aded into battery and that if the battery size would be configurable via mobile app some people would by trying to avoid the limitation by purposely setting larger battey capacity than actually installed it would be still better than people avoiding new firmwares and additional security features alltogether.Finally while I personally find the 25 Km / h limit no problem as I hardly ever crusie over that speed anyway it's always good to have some speed reseve if needed in case of emergency where you might need brefly accelerate over such limit to avoid obstacle or colission etc.

What if the battery size (capacity) is detected? The main board is detecting a threshold voltage and limits speed. What about health state of the battery and operating temperature? How does a certain discharge curve looks the battery on your EUC right now? How does it look like in a year at low temp.? Kicks the "protection" in to early or to late? This kind of protection needs to be refined more granuraly. But we need them.

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1 minute ago, OliverH said:

What if the battery size (capacity) is detected? The main board is detecting a threshold voltage and limits speed. What about health state of the battery and operating temperature? How does a certain discharge curve looks the battery on your EUC right now? How does it look like in a year at low temp.? Kicks the "protection" in to early or to late? This kind of protection needs to be refined more granuraly. But we need them.

Indeed there are even more factors to be taken into consideration like wind speed or weighr of the rider and so on. Still though I'd say 50% capacity treshold is a bit harsh for higher sizes of batteries. 40 or even 35% would still provide sufficient safety marging without limiting the rider too much / too early even under harder conditions. Actually it should not be that hard for good firmware to monitor the battery usage / discharge trend during the current ride and make a good estimate of how much battery is left based on actual riding conditions and to decide when exactly the speed limitation should kick in to maximize both the security margin as well as the time / distance the wheel could be riding before protection activates. Just to be clear I'm not against having such feature being built in even in its current "raw" state. I just understand where some users are coming from with this option.

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2 hours ago, HEC said:

Indeed there are even more factors to be taken into consideration like wind speed or weighr of the rider and so on. Still though I'd say 50% capacity treshold is a bit harsh for higher sizes of batteries. 40 or even 35% would still provide sufficient safety marging without limiting the rider too much / too early even under harder conditions. Actually it should not be that hard for good firmware to monitor the battery usage / discharge trend during the current ride and make a good estimate of how much battery is left based on actual riding conditions and to decide when exactly the speed limitation should kick in to maximize both the security margin as well as the time / distance the wheel could be riding before protection activates. Just to be clear I'm not against having such feature being built in even in its current "raw" state. I just understand where some users are coming from with this option.

That needs a new mainboard generation with more CPU power or separated calculation beside the main brain. Who should develop it? The focus of today's manufacturer are different. If it's low hanging fruit why not. If it's complex and difficult someone needs to pay for it. 

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to get back to the original question:

 

where does the app become the firmware from?

it should be possible to rename 1.18 to 1.20....or set up a own server where to get the firmware...

ninebot mini owners had the same prob last week when the newest firmware set down max speed and other problems....AND they found a workaround....

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3 hours ago, KingSong69 said:

to get back to the original question:

 

where does the app become the firmware from?

it should be possible to rename 1.18 to 1.20....or set up a own server where to get the firmware...

ninebot mini owners had the same prob last week when the newest firmware set down max speed and other problems....AND they found a workaround....

I never looked in detail at the ninebot mini firmware downgrade thread - but how i understood it, they changed the json file (directory for firmware versions) on an own webserver on their pc to which they routed the phone app by dns server change. Imho they managed to downgrade the version this way - maybe i just got it totally wrong, since i did not really read in detail there...

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9 hours ago, OliverH said:

That needs a new mainboard generation with more CPU power or separated calculation beside the main brain. Who should develop it? The focus of today's manufacturer are different. If it's low hanging fruit why not. If it's complex and difficult someone needs to pay for it. 

Not really. Maybe some early generations cheapo / nonbranded generic EUCs might struggle with the board but then nobody would bother to develop the new FW for those anyway. All current modern boards shall be more than capable of such simple additional task. Most of them are already measuring speed, voltage, current and odo anyway and even broadcasting it via BT so one extra task of putting those together to make rough estimate of remaining battery capacity will hardly make those sweat ;)

And to the question who will develop the firmware ... Well those manufacturers who listen to their customers and want to stay in play or be ahead of the competition while market slowly saturates Without inovation and unique or advanced features their products will be less sought after by advanced users and enthusiatics like us who are most likely to shed some extra dough for such advanded / refined models.

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7 hours ago, KingSong69 said:

 

it should be possible to rename 1.18 to 1.20....or set up a own server where to get the firmware...

ninebot mini owners had the same prob last week when the newest firmware set down max speed and other problems....AND they found a workaround....

Renaming the FW file is not an issue or even solution here as King Song doesn't put the FW version into the file name and even if they did it would be most likely pointless excercise to rename it as most device nowadays use internal check of the FW version based on the checksums and codes embeded in the FW file. There is still the chance though that KS took the cheap way out and skipped some advanced checks and have simply FW version noted in the update file with only simply CRC applied.

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As @HEC pointed it, unfortunatly it's not as simple as that.

Tried to put the binary file in the right directory, but it isn't working at all. FW 1.20 is detected and no other action is possible in the app.

 

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I personally like speed and would be a but upset if the firmware limits the speed to 25kph on half battery (even though i recognize the need for safery measures). I also have a concern about how this is implemented. Lets say im riding at 30kph and at that time the battery goes below 50%. Will i be hit with an aggressive tiltback because suddenly i am 5 kph over speed limit?

this kind if tiltback happening unexpectedly is enough to throw one off the wheel.

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5 minutes ago, Cloud said:

I also have a concern about how this is implemented. Lets say im riding at 30kph and at that time the battery goes below 50%. Will i be hit with an aggressive tiltback because suddenly i am 5 kph over speed limit?

this kind if tiltback happening unexpectedly is enough to throw one off the wheel.

Very good point.  I never even thought about that.  @tinawong can you answer this?  EDIT: Or perhaps even @Jason McNeil can answer this?

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The smart thing I think would be to have a slight gradual tiltback to help slow the rider down as required due to lower battery power.  If the battery is above 50% (or whatever level) keep the tilt only happening nearer the high speed limit.   If you are going at a constant 30 kph and the battery power drops down, a gradual tiltback can help slow you down and warn you.  You can choose to ignore it, but it will be unsafe and you will need to work harder at it.  If you slow down slightly the tilt goes away.

You can feel the pedal posture in your feet while riding so you automatically know not to push it harder.  You can still, but it just takes more effort.  The more angled tiltback should only be used closer to very low battery level or over taxing what power is left going up a hill or over-heating or other urgent need.  There shouldn't be an extremely fast large angled tiltback to destabilize the rider.  Scale the tiltback setting down automatically as required by checking available power left.

Unless they can make a battery guaranteed to provide 30 kph speeds under load from 100% charge to zero and be able to handle any sudden burst of power needed (sudden hill, sharp bump, quick overlean wanting more acceleration) having a smart tiltback that scales back when necessary can be a good thing I think.  But doesn't KS already have a good tiltback system already in place?  I keep seeing people mention how good the KS14 tiltback is?

Edit:  Maybe they could have the low battery warning tiltback user adjustable like on an iPhone or laptop with a minimum safe setting that can't be set lower.  That way users with different capacities can customize the setting as needed?  50% battery power of a 132 wh pack versus a 10000 wh pack is a lot different as is with a brand new pack versus a really old pack.  Or the controller could be programmed to monitor discharge rates like how some laptops can to help figure out where to set the tiltback.  On my Lenovo x220 they have a pretty smart battery management system.

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If it Is in no way possible to downgrade Firmware only Kingsong Can help!

@tinawong please give us The Option to choose Firmware when installing....example:

i Am on v1.13 and only want to install 1.18

 

or:

do a Version 1.21 where People Can Choose when this 25kmh "Safety Feature" Kicks in!

for example 50%, 40%, 25%!

than People with lower Batterie power (340) Can Choose other than 840wh owners!

 

look at Ninebot mini how a wrong Firmware Can destroy Reputation of a Company.....

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First time I've heard of this. You won't believe the number of times I've pleaded with KS before whimsically implementing FW changes that they at least inform/consult their distributors with the proposed changes. From the factory visit a couple days ago, I was informed that the conservative ride mode kicks in at 55v & limp-home 50v.

Can someone please confirm what the voltage level is when it goes into this speed restriction mode?

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