Steem Cycle Update: Good News and Bad News.

Good news first, the big surprise I alluded to last time:

A persistence of vision LED display on the front wheel! When it spins, it will depict a gif of a slowly rotating STEEM coin animated by fellow Steemian kommienezuspadt. I've inverted the black and white so only the coin is lit up instead of the background, but it is otherwise unchanged.

Some time soon I'll get a video of this thing in action. I don't have a bike stand so it's tough to show it off while stationary.

Also, I recently got cup holder and phone mount attachments. Obviously I cannot show you how the phone looks in the mount as it's my only camera (probs a good idea to spend some Steemit bux on a decent digital camera if I keep running into this problem).

I couldn't mount the cupholder facing towards me due to a physical conflict with the tops of the front shock pistons. Works fine this way, though the center of the handlebars is now a bit crowded. Certainly not room for any more than what's on there now.

I am well pleased with the securing mechanism on the phone mount however. It's very cleverly engineered. Twist a knob in the back and the arms extend outward or retract inward. This is a much faster process than getting your phone into or out of the mounts which use elastic bands.

Now, the bad news: I've got some busted spokes. Only one actually bent and popped out. The rest (7 in total) have just lost the bit at the bottom which attaches it to the rim. That's not an immediately threatening problem but it does need attention.

If I had to guess I would say it's the torque exerted on the wheel. Not so much when accelerating but when hard braking, as the bike itself is a big heavy mass. What I need are thicker spokes, but no bike shop in the area is willing to respoke this wheel, they all have exclusive partnerships with specific ebike manufacturers which forbid them to work on other brands.

I really need to figure out a solution sooner rather than later, as the more spokes get busted, the faster the rest will give way. It's definitely not something I can ignore for long, I just have no idea how to move forward with solving it. I don't know how the fuck to respoke a wheel.

Anyways that's all for now, stay tuned. I'll definitely let you guys know when I get the wheel respoked, and I'll try to get some footage of the front wheel display in action.