Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Never I thought I'd be reading about a wheelchair locked behind paywalls. What a ridiculous world we live in.

Edit: I'm glad you figured something out and that those profiteers won't get a cent out of it.

I'm sorry I don't have any answer, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry you have to go through this to make your life easier. Also I fucking hate unrestrained capitalism.

Hey Op, since you appear to be somewhere in the EU based on your mention of Euro pricing, would you be willing to name and shame the wheelchair manufacturer and/or model?

Without giving too much of my own personal information away, I might be in a position to cause a bit of ruckus for this particular company in terms of bad PR, possibly legislatively. I work for a company that profiles itself on doing this stuff "the right way" (secure practises, not screwing users this way, etc) and we are working on building a list of practises we are hoping to root out EU-Wide with some examples that are clearly exploitative.

I need nothing personally identifiable, just the brand and model, and I can pass it along to the team that can investigate further.

literal predatory behavior against society's most vulnerable members. God, disgusting.

Calling out this company that produces the e-motion, Alber GmbH. FUCK them.

You want to have both hands free while moving or an extra dose of speed to go faster? With the Mobility Plus Package you can activate a variety of clever additional functions in the Mobility App.

With the Mobility Plus Package you can increase the support speed from 6 km/h to 8,5 km/h and benefit from the Cruise Mode that allows you to keep a permanent speed with only one deflection on the push rim.

Holy fuck!?!? The wheelchair is actually actively crippled if you don't pay?

If you are able to crack software, this is the time to stand up and do actual real good for humanity !

This makes me so angry.

300 to operate wheels that you don't even own? That's extortion, right?

Jesus fucking mother of Christ.

Ok, I'm going to skip my indignation.

I'm not an app developer or a wheel chair person. That said, we need some info to help you better.

• What phone? Android or iOS?
• link to the app (and a link it's APK or whatever iPhones equivalent to an APK would be)
• instructions on how you register, e.g. is registration tied to your phone, the wheelchair, or both?

Here is some general hacking advice:

• check online for your wheelchairs "provider" manual. I "hacked" my CPAP machine a few years back. My doctor forgot to turn on heated tubing and the setting was hidden behind a "provider" menu. Chances are good that there will be a similar manual for your wheelchair.
• if you haven't already, search for the make and model of your wheelchair and see if there are forums or discussion boards
• typically, physical access is the best access. Depending on how your phone communicates with the chair, you might able to spy on the signals that it uses. My guess is Bluetooth. It probably is encrypted but medical devices are notoriously easy skimpy on their tech security. Might be worth a try
• If you have the tools and the knowledge, consider taking apart the wheelchair to access the physical components. Information like the processor, chip set, etc will make it easier to understand how it works. While you might expect custom boards and software, more and more devices are going the Raspberry Pi or Pico route because they are cheaper to manufacturer than to do a whole custom board. If it's a run of the mill consumer board, you have a lot more attack vectors.

Often settings like these are based on PKI(Public Key Infrastructure), meaning that the program on your wheelchair likely knows the public key for the company and will test any input to change the settings will require the private key. Again, generally speaking.

But also generally speaking, medical equipment, especially consumer equipment, has to deal with the lowest common denominator, meaning people who don't have apps, who don't know what a smart phone is, etc. Because of that, my hunch is that the setting is in plain text and you just need to change it.

You also have to remember that the people setting this up are often in doctors offices, which means it must be easy to do because time is of the essence. The doctor would not recommend their product if it takes more than a few minutes to set up.

I'm sorry I can't give you better more specific advice but hopefully you can figure this out.

I'm infurated you have to pay 300 bucks for An app on this situation. Incensed beyond reason. Please link to the specific app in question, and then if you can't get anything working contact me and I'll buy the stupid thing for you.

I'd much rather make sure things like this never make any money for anyone. But not at the cost of someone in your situation having to wait any longer to access the tools you need. Man am I pissed about that kind of paywalling on medical devices. Holy hell.

This brings a new definition to the term "crippleware".

This is so damn wholesome. Thank you fellow humans for helping this person and even offering to pay. Why I am cutting onions this early in the day is a mystery.

In case you haven't seen them, i just wanna make sure you've heard of these guys; https://notawheelchair.com/

ah sweet

manmade horrors beyond my comprehension

Lucky Patcher patches the odex files, not the apk. I could not figure out if it's possible to tranfer odex files to a different phone.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/luckypatcher/comments/yzao3u/sharing_apps_with_lucky_patcher_mod/

This is so fucked up and sad. Capitalism is pure evil.

Jesus that sucks so much. It looks like you have a solution for now but I bet there are some folks here and elsewhere who would be all in on reverse engineering the shit out of any part of that system.

Very pleased to see other users were able to help you out. Also disgusted at how you were in such a situation in the first place.

Fuck this company. Fuck these ghouls making this decision.

This is easily the most badass form of piracy I've ever seen. The right kind of rebellion.

Wheelchair Manufacturer:

We’ve heard your complaints, which we never got when tiering by selling different physical models of wheelchair. Going forward, our app will be free, but features will be limited by the equipment actually physically installed in our Standard/Premium/Luxury models.

Yes, the physical equipment needed is only fuses, but we’ve obfuscated that by encasing them in cryptexes and adding fancy plastic design elements to the more expensive models.

Now, our business practices are indistinguishable from Honda upcharging for a sunroof. Except life’s harder when you don’t upgrade with us.

:( hey but good job staying at it and finding a way!