Modern Vespa

Vespa makes an app for its newer MIA enabled scooters. It's pretty cool...tracks GPS and vehicle telemetry data and gives you a fun but kinda useless dashboard to show you RPM and other stats. I actually like the tracking and bluetooth functionality of my GTS 300 SS.

But, you can't export your rides into something like https://relive.cc/...which is totally what I want to do. There was a whole thread about it on this forum even about [Exporting Data from Vespa App] where SteelBytes talked about creating an Android app to fill the gap.

In that same spirit (and thanks to SteelBytes for the hint), I just created VespaGPX for iOS!

https://shamur.ai/bin/vespaGPX/

It's pretty simple but has a few steps. You first track your rides in the official Vespa app. Export them as JSON (which is not really human readable). Load that JSON into VespaGPX. Then you can pick what ride or rides you wanna export as GPX (or get a CSV of the vehicle telemetry data). Throw that GPX into your favorite mapping software and voilà!

The app is free on the Apple iOS app store. No in-app purchases. Totally private (no data is sent off the phone). Totally open source (code is on Github).

It's also brand new and pretty no frills...I'll be making some improvements but know it's not meant to replace the official Vespa app. It's only designed to get your data out.

Now you'll have to make a full app like me

Ever written BLE code? (or Bluetooth non-BLE for older models). And do you have too much time on your hands?

I have written some very low level BLE code (see: https://medium.com/@ayman/fabrics-in-spaces-ec28b062bef5)...is that how the Vespa casts data to the phone?

Your app is way more fully functional than mine which just converts Vespa output to something readable and usable. Mostly I wanted to stitch trips together because when I'm on a long ride and I stop for coffee, I still want just one GPX file. I'm not looking to add all the cool stuff your app does or fall into a time sink as you forewarn!

Nope. BLE advertisements are pretty limited, not good for much except broadcasting a couple of sensors (typically unsecured).

The PMP3 system in current Vespa uses BLE Characteristics to send and recv akin to UDP. The app requests a list of data ids for the bike to send then assembles multiple response fragments into a full frame of data. There's also plenty of handshake stuff including exchange of a random unique key for each pairing as a form of security.

The PMP2 in previous Vespas used Bluetooth non-BLE akin to TCP. A lot less painful. And also faster, ie more samples per second are possible.

When Piaggio contracted Hella (different company to PMP2) to make the PMP3 system I feel their choice of BLE was a mix of not understanding the pros and cons of BLE and managers thinking the LE part of the name was important even though there is a good power source - not a little button cell battery.

Bonus comment: with GoPro ble is used for commands but not for file transfer or streaming of video. Instead it switches to wifi because Bluetooth (both flavours) is slow.

Ya wowza! I see you've been deep in the stack for a while. And ya, if you've got a 12v power source and a phone (likely on a charger) power saving stacks just becomes arduous.

For VespaGPX, I think I'm happy leaving it with the feature that should have been in the app already.

Don't worry, my latest hobby is reverse engineering the ecu

If that is the case, can you help explain why my Sportcity starts, accelerates and runs perfectly when on the center stand(1/2 hour+)- but as soon as I take it off the stand it sputters and dies within minutes?