Proform Tour de France Exercise bike

I bought a used Proform Tour de France exercise bike to replace a homemade version exercise bike.  Not knowing much about it I decided to take a leap of faith for the low used price of $400CAD (regular $1999?).  

Proform Le Tour de France exercise bike.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of the bike.  It seems sturdily built and allows very high resistance settings, something missing from my last bike.  It is very quiet when pedaling owing to its magnetic resistance, belt drive and narrow flywheel.  It has a nice incline function to enhance the experience, so I feel like I am actually going up a hill (or down).  Thankfully, it was in good condition and nothing was broken. 

The first task was to replace the seat.  I comes with a wide seat on a non standard mounting system.  So, I found a similar shaped rectangle of steel and welded on a length of scrap seatpost I had salvaged from an old bike. 

The other negative to me is the handlebars that came with the bike.  Very "gym" bike style -- my preference is for some nice road drop handlebars, but with the integrated incline and gear buttons, their replacement will be a bit more work.

My first few rides have been, well, a bit boring. I watch TV and try to keep my heart rate up for the duration.  But it leaves me wanting more and I think the capabilities of the bike are not fully exploited.  The bike has some Tempo and Interval Apps. But it seems all they do is set some targets for your watt output.  And you can program interval training limits into the bike too, but again it seems a bit simple.  There is a Bluetooth connection that allows the use of an iFit app but I'm not really up for the monthly subscription.  And it seems the iFit app is a bit like watching a movie of a bike ride.  It doesn't really take into account the effort you put into the workout.  

So, what to do with the bike? Can it be connected to Zwift? Could I write my own simple workouts for the bike?  Maybe upload a GPS file of my favorite ride? It might be time to look inside and see what makes it all tick.

Hacking the exercise bike

Philips Speechmike. Upgrade nightmare.

 I recently installed some windows updates on my wife's home office computer.  She does dictations with a Philips Speechmike USB microphone to Dragon dictate software.  The Philips microphone seems good quality but wasn't cheap ($400Cdn).  Upon reboot, I was greeted by a popup saying "new firmware available for your microphone" and the choice of "install now"or "later".  

Oh, I wish I had clicked "later"...  but I clicked "install now"...  So a dialog pops up with a green bar flashing back and forth urging me to not unplug the microphone as the upgrade can take several minutes.  So I wait.  And wait. And wait.  Then I notice that the Philips microphone software says that there is no microphone connected.  And the drop down menu to select the microphone cannot select the microphone model.  Troubleshooting suggestions are not helpful like saying the USB may not have enough power or that it might not like a specific port.  What the heck?  So I wait.  And wait. And wait.  Finally I bite the bullet and unplug the USB microphone and try plugging it back in with no result. 

The microphone is gone and doesn't show up as a device in Windows.  So I try it on a different computer with Linux.  No evidence of the microphone in dmesg. The USB functionality doesn't exist anymore.

So what happened?  Info is sparse online but it seems a failed upgrade can brick your device.  Who writes a firmware upgrade like this?  Is there no failsafe? I was relatively uninvolved in the upgrade (just click once), there were no warnings that this could ruin a $400 microphone.  Fortunately, my wife has an identical microphone that was not being used at work.   So once we plugged the new one in, the computer recognized it immediately indicating that it was not a driver issue caused by the update.

But is there a way to fix the old microphone?  The hardware still works, it seems as though just the firmware is missing or corrupt.

Opening the microphone reveals....  not much.  Some buttons, lots of test points, maybe a jtag connection.  Down at the bottom is the brains of the system, an NXP2364 chip.

Arm7 with on board flash, blah, blah, blah.  Not sure how Philips disabled the USB functionality with a bad firmware upgrade, but there you go.  

So, where to from here? I will try to access a windows 7 computer to see if older USB drivers magically fix the connectivity.  Maybe there is some way of forcing a firmware upgrade via some of the test points.  But seems unlikely...  so maybe this is just junk.