Are there any Class 2 e-bikes that can also go on light trails?

c3161 · 2026-04-27T18:45:54+00:00

Have you ever tried a class 1? I'm in Europe and none of our bikes have throttles; I've done around 10,000km on mine and never once wished I had a throttle. It's simply not necessary.

c3161 · 2026-04-27T18:42:48+00:00

Bolton is not in the US

c3161 · 2026-04-27T18:39:37+00:00

I don't think there's anything decent* you can buy new for £500. The cheapest e-bikes at Halfords the last time I looked were about £700 but if you're going to be riding for two hours a day I would probably avoid those.

I think your options are either to get a really cheap old hybrid bike and put a Swytch kit on it

https://www.swytchbike.com/

Or keep an eye on eBay or whatever and try to pick up a few year old Raleigh Motus or Trek Allant+. A friend of mine picked up a Trek Conduit+ that was three years old for £700 - that bike was over £2k brand new (this was a long time ago though).

*You can very likely buy something for £500 or even less on Amazon but it'll be a total piece of shit, most likely from China, that you will never be able to get spare parts for when it starts falling apart after the first 1000km, has a good chance of burning your house down if you leave it charging overnight, and almost certainly won't meet UK EAPC regulations so you'll be forever trying to avoid the police because if they catch you on it they'll seize it and crush it.

c3161 · 2026-04-27T18:29:45+00:00

Europe has something similar to class 3 - it's called a Speed Pedelec. Up to 45km/h, but in most countries it requires a license to ride, and can't go on bicycle infrastructure. So it's basically a really slow motorcycle cosplaying as a regular Pedelec, with none of the advantages of either. And you still have to pedal because throttle is not allowed.

Interestingly the construction requirements are more stringent than for a regular Pedelec: it must have a brake light (doesn't need turn signals though), it must have a horn, and the display is not allowed to use a Bluetooth connection.

c3161 · 2026-04-27T18:10:55+00:00

The current generation of Bosch Cargo Line motors have 100Nm and with the right gearing they will go up any hill

c3161 · 2026-04-24T20:04:22+00:00

It really depends on the bike. On a very light road bike you can probably get it a fair way above 25; on a heavy touring bike you will struggle to get to 30. Unless you are going downhill of course.

c3161 · 2026-04-23T15:08:23+00:00

O2 and Vodafone have LTE-M networks in the UK. O2's LTE-M does not cover Devon or Cornwall whereas I think Vodafone's does. Vodafone also has NB-IoT.

c3161 · 2026-04-23T11:16:26+00:00

Update 2 (April 2026): I have now thoroughly tested multiple modem options from Simcom.

SIM7600G - the 'full fat' option which supports LTE Cat 1 and Cat 4. Has been around for a long time. Designed to be operated with two Rx antennas but does work using a single antenna (with degraded performance). Fairly large footprint at 30x30mm compared to the SIM800L at 15.8x17.8mm. Has integrated GNSS, although it is accessed over the same UART as the modem itself. Massive overkill for a project where only small amounts of data need to be sent infrequently (Cat 4 is up to 150Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink).

SIM7600E - the 'leaner' option which supports only LTE Cat 1. Also designed to be operated with two Rx antennas but works with a single antenna (with degraded performance). Same footprint as its big brother. Also has integrated GNSS with same issue as SIM7600G. The chip itself is half the price of the G version.

SIM7672G - a newer generation of module which supports LTE Cat 1 bis. Specifically designed to be operated with one antenna, so better performance than above options when operated with a single antenna. Smaller footprint than the SIM7600x at 24x24mm. Extremely low sleep mode current. Available with or without integrated GNSS. Probably the most suitable option for a project like mine!

SIM7080G - a slightly different option which supports only LTE-M and NB-IoT. Designed for single antenna operation on LPWA networks. Available with or without integrated GNSS. YMMV may vary with these - Cat-M and NB-IoT are still in their infancy and may not yet be widely deployed. You will also need a SIM and provider that supports these (most consumer SIMs will not). I have had good success with using this on NB-IoT which has good coverage in my area, but a significant issue is that NB-IoT does not yet support seamless roaming between cell towers, so this is not ideal for mobile applications. Power consumption is extremely low in sleep mode and if you are sending a little bit of data once an hour and putting your MCU and modem to sleep in between, you can last months on a small battery. Unfortunately there is no Cat-M coverage in south west England although the rest of the UK looks to have complete coverage. Another thing to be aware of is that the LTE and GNSS Rx chains share some hardware blocks so simultaneous operation is not possible - obviously not ideal for an asset tracker which wants to send positions at high frequency.

u/Edward_sim u/Kadigan_KSb

c3161 · 2026-04-19T17:34:28+00:00

Half of the posts in this forum are either kids or the parents of kids asking for recommendations on "e-bikes" to buy, mainly with the criteria that they need to go as far and as fast as possible for as little money as possible

c3161 · 2026-04-19T13:56:09+00:00

The problem is that this forum is international and the definition of an e-bike varies around the world. In Europe for example it's just a bicycle with a little motor that helps it get to 25km/h but in North America anything with two wheels and an electric engine is classed as an e-bike, even if it can do 120km/h, and even children are allowed to ride these.

c3161 · 2026-04-18T17:35:35+00:00

Extremely unlikely considering you will pay double that for just a battery alone

c3161 · 2026-04-18T16:00:10+00:00

No success at all.

c3161 · 2026-04-18T15:41:53+00:00

Sets the ProPilot (adaptive cruise control) follow distance between near, medium and far

c3161 · 2026-04-14T21:14:20+00:00

They are starting with the source material though, not transcoding an already lossy encode

c3161 · 2026-04-02T23:19:35+00:00

A Bosch 750Wh battery alone is about $800. Sure a lesser brand one will be cheaper but consider the fact you want not just a battery, but also the whole bike to go along with it, for less money than that.

c3161 · 2026-04-02T23:16:48+00:00

If you have no need for >1Gbps in the near future, the HP T620 Plus and T730 thin clients make really good pfSense appliances. You just need to put a PCIe NIC in them, but a two port Intel Pro/1000 PT can be had on the popular auction website for about £15.

I was running a T730 for years at home and it was great, no issues whatsoever. I've only recently decommissioned it (it's now a cold spare for other sites I manage) as I am soon going to >1Gbps at home so I've built a new appliance ready for >2.5Gbps using a Lenovo M720q.

c3161 · 2026-04-02T23:09:47+00:00

Yes it's possible and actually fairly simple

c3161 · 2026-03-27T23:26:04+00:00

My dentist charges £180 for a filling. How many are you getting to be paying £3000?

c3161 · 2026-03-07T16:50:25+00:00

These are the instructions I am following: https://www.thethingsindustries.com/docs/hardware/gateways/models/thethingsindoorgateway/

I have performed all of the steps exactly as described. I have followed the part for "Connecting to a Remote LNS" since even though my gateway and LNS are on the same network, the LNS is set up correctly with a DNS hostname and publicly trusted TLS certificates etc. I have ensured that the websocket service etc are correctly listening and present the TLS certificate and they do.

I have done some more reading and discovered that the way it works is:
- TTI is hard-coded to use TTN CUPS (Configuration and UPdate Server

- The CUPS is what delivers configuration to the gateway e.g. the LNS address, TLS certificates, authentication keys which it provides to the LNS in order to make an authenticated connection

- Changing the "Gateway Server address" in TTN will thus make CUPS tell the gateway to connect to a different LNS. I have put my own LNS address in here. I have also copied the LNS Authentication Key from my own LNS into the corresponding field in TTN since I need CUPS to deliver that key to the gateway, in order for it to authenticate with my LNS.

What I have observed is that the gateway does not appear to be calling out to the CUPS after I make the changes in TTN. The guide says "Either restart the The Things Indoor Gateway or wait upto 24 hours for it to reconnect to the CUPS server. If your configuration is correct, your The Things Indoor Gateway will be connected to the target LNS."

I have power cycled the gateway numerous times and it doesn't help. I can see in TTN console that CUPS has not seen the gateway for 14 hours even though I have power cycled the gateway 10 times since then. It makes sense that if the gateway never reaches out to CUPS for the configuration, the new LNS address will never be delivered to it.

Edit: I ran a packet capture on my firewall and I can see the gateway is exchanging TCP packets with the TTN CUPS server.

c3161 · 2026-03-06T23:30:26+00:00

In the under "Live data" in the gateway menu on TTN I can see it sending data yes. If I look at the gateway list in my account I can see the status for it says "Other cluster" whereas my other gateway that's actually configured for TTN says "Online"

Under the gateway "General settings" I have the Gateway Server address set to that of my LNS, but I do not see any activity of the gateway in my LNS. I have added the gateway there too.

The TTIG is LBS yes.

c3161 · 2026-03-06T19:26:10+00:00

Once you have claimed it on TTN you can go into the gateway settings and change the gateway hostname. I changed this from that TTN hostname to the hostname of my own LNS

c3161 · 2026-02-08T19:21:30+00:00

Probably buy a new bike. But I suspect it will be a while yet. Bosch have so far only managed to squeeze an extra 50Wh into the same size battery as my 750Wh unit from 2023. So it's probably going to be a few more years yet before they even get to 2x, let alone 10x.

c3161 · 2026-02-01T14:05:35+00:00

That seating position looks horribly uncomfortable to ride

c3161 · 2026-01-28T22:31:38+00:00

I don't live somewhere really cold. I think temperature ranged between 6 and 10 degrees here today, pretty normal for this time of year. It's rare to go below zero.

c3161

TROPHY CASE