KS16a vs KS16b vs KS16c, and other KS questions

[blindjoedeath]

Hey, folks - just got my KS16 delivered last week from @Jason McNeil at ewheels, and while I COULD pester him with all my questions, I figured I'd throw this out to the crowd first. :-)

First off - I haven't ridden it yet (I'm a newbie, and want to protect it with foam, etc., first). But I unboxed it, charged it (turns out, it was close to full charge anyway), and tried to connect it to my Android phone (Nexus 6P, running Nougat) via both the KS official app that Jason sent me, and the WheelLog app.  WheelLog connected fine, but the KS app wouldn't. Any thoughts?  I know there were some older posts about this that I can use to troubleshoot.

Second - from the WheelLog app, I saw that I had the KS16c. What are the differences between the b & c versions? (I know "a" is really considered a beta version.)

Third - and this is more a rant than anything, but as others have said, I can confirm that the actual manual is crap (Jason's writeup is much better). I can't quite understand why (mostly) Chinese companies skimp on that portion of their product - for a few hundred/thousand bucks, they can get a decent English speaker to write a manual, but they don't - but they DO invest in great batteries, motors, etc. - the actual expensive stuff. Again, I'm not talking about just KingSong - visit any AliExpress store, and you'll see the same thing. I guess I'm wondering why this is? Doesn't make much business sense. <rant over>

  

[HEC]

5 minutes ago, blindjoedeath said:

First off - I haven't ridden it yet (I'm a newbie, and want to protect it with foam, etc., first). But I unboxed it, charged it (turns out, it was close to full charge anyway), and tried to connect it to my Android phone (Nexus 6P, running Nougat) via both the KS official app that Jason sent me, and the WheelLog app.  WheelLog connected fine, but the KS app wouldn't. Any thoughts?

Congrats on your new shiny EUC. The issue with official app is most likely the Android permissions - you'd need to grant the app in the setting the "location" access as that weirdly needed to BT LE access by the app. This was explained more in details in a couple of threads here so if you'll not manage to figure it out try to search KS sub-forum.

[Jason McNeil]

@blindjoedeath, thanks for the good word! For the permission problem, from what I understand any normal App, e.g. Kevin's WheelLog, prompts the User to confirm the necessary permissions as part of the installation process. The KS (same goes for the GW) App developer doesn't appear to have read too many books about Mobile App Best Practices—or any other books—so that's why there's this problem. 

KS themselves are don't have any satisfactory answers about the B/C variants. Worse still, they used to label their 16B boxes as 16As, which made a lot of confusion for Customers, especially when upgrading the FW, A/B are completely incompatible with each other.

I started work on producing an intelligible manual for the KS Wheels, but I'm a bit stretched, & it dropped away from being a priority project.

[blindjoedeath]

Thanks, folks - yeah, I was able to get the KS app to connect last night after fixing the permissions.  Wish the app was less janky, but I was able to get it to do what I wanted.

Re: the manuals - I'm thinking we might want to add a wiki section to this forum for "Using your Kingsong/Gotway/Ninebot..." - basically better and crowd-updated manuals for each device. But I'm not sure who to talk to about that, whether the forum supports a wiki, or whether there's enough demand.  I might make a post into General about this if I get in the mood.

[HermanTheGerman]

On 27.9.2016 at 6:49 PM, blindjoedeath said:

Re: the manuals - I'm thinking we might want to add a wiki section to this forum for "Using your Kingsong/Gotway/Ninebot..." - basically better and crowd-updated manuals for each device. But I'm not sure who to talk to about that, whether the forum supports a wiki, or whether there's enough demand.  I might make a post into General about this if I get in the mood.

Sounds like a good idea.