The sharing bike is very popular in China these days. There are more than 10 brands of sharing bike on the market, and the “mobike” is the most famous one, it has more than 100 million registered users, and has spread to cities other than China, such as London and Singapore.

As a hardware engineer, Makerfabs would like to share you
some technology about the Electronic system of mobike, which is actually a standard IOT solution that can be applied to other projects.

There are there main modules in the system:

1. Device connectivity: mainly for the remote controlling/monitoring of the bike;

2. Data processing: mainly for the logic of bike controlling and user managements;

3. Presentation to users: the app on the users smartphone to interact with the user;

Step 1: Roles Introduction

Basically, there are 3 roles in this game:

1.) The mobike, with IOT hardware on it. It mainly composed of a MCU controller/wireless communication and battery;

2.) Users. Can be treated as a smartphone with App installed;

3.) The mobike IOT cloud, to support related logical computing ability, and act as the brain. It often composed by some super computers and a huge amount of data about all the users and bikes.

Step 2: Mobike Waiting the User

When the bike is not used, the bike gets its location, with GPS periodically, and reports to the cloud its location with the GPRS connectivity. So the cloud can always monitor where the bike is.

Step 3: User Begin to Request a Bike

When a user take out her/his smartphone, and open the app, the app reports the user location to the cloud, with Wifi/3G/GPRS connectivity (depends on the phone connectivity to Internet).

And then the cloud feedback the phone the available bike around.

Step 4: IOT Sytem Dealing With the Request and Feedback to User, Sharing Bike Unlock~

The most important step:

1.) User get a bike around and scan the QR code on the bike;

2.) Smart Phone App send the “cloud, please open the lock” request to the cloud(with Wifi/3G/GPRS, depends on the phone connectivity to Internet), with the QR code scan on the bike;

3.) Mobike cloud sent “bike, open the lock” request to the mobike via GPRS connectivity;

4.) Mobike open the lock, and feedback to the cloud “OK, lock open, commander”, via GPRS connectivity;

5). Mobike cloud feedback the phone ”yes, the locked open”, with Wifi/3G/GPRS connectivity;

Makerfabs GPS Tracker based on Arduino and SIM808 GPRS+GPS modules, plus the power management, to make it ready for the one-stop solution for the IOT applications.

Step 5: User Use the Sharing Bike

Mobike report the GPS location to cloud all the time when works, so the cloud can monitor where the bike and user is.

Step 6: User Stop the Riding

When the user want to stop the using of mobike, he do not need to do anything on the phone, just lock bike manually, and so far the business completed. The Mobike and the cloud will:

1.) Mobike report the cloud: ”cloud, I have been locked” with GPRS connection;

2.) Cloud feedback users the bike has been locked, and put the bill to user.