More Bike-controlled Google-travelling

This is becoming such a popular hack we figure someone needs to come up with a name for it like Google-travelling or Google-cising (exercising with Google). It’s a bike controller for Google Earth. [Braingram] broke out his road bike, setting it up in the trainer in front of his laptop. If you already have a computer with a cadence sensor this will be a snap. These measure the crank rotation using a magnet and reed switch. So as not screw up his summer biking [Braingram] spliced into the sensor while leaving it attached to the bike computer. From there it is read by an Arduino which also monitors an analog joystick attached to the handlebars. A little bit of Python scripting and you’ll be ready to go.

Be sure to check out some of the other variants like using an exercise bike, or adding a wearable display.

16 thoughts on “More Bike-controlled Google-travelling

  1. google

    Pronounciation:

    – enPR: go͞o’gəl, IPA: /ˈɡuːɡəl/, SAMPA: /”gu:g@l/
    – Homophobes: very few

    Verb

    to google (third-person singular simple present googles, present participle googling, simple past and past participle googled)

    1. (transitive) To search for (something) on the Internet using the Google search engine.

    Tom googles all of his prospective girlfriends.

    2. (transitive) (by extension) To search for (something) on the Internet using any comprehensive search engine.

    I googled him but there were no references to him
    on the Internet

    3. (intransitive) (Internet) To be locatable in a search of the Internet.

    His name googles.

    4. (intransitive) To simulate bicycling outside by connecting a home trainer to a computer running Google Earth.

    I googled 20 miles today!

  2. @ MrX-

    A) Because it’s winter in some places currently. Winter means ice. Bicycles don’t always do so well on sheets of ice.

    B) Some people might want to “bicycle” in a different geographic region with different scenery than they live in.

    C) If I lived in New York I’d rather bicycle in my apartment as opposed to behind a taxi spewing carbon monoxide in my face.

  3. Bicycles work year round, streets get cleaned, bodies stay fit. I motorcycled ’78-’79 winter with trials universal tires, that was a record still standing.
    Does the terrain load the bike, does the current wind load also. That’s simulating! Import weather stats, and does Google Earth have elevation data. I live on a steep hill.
    Now the grammar. They teach this backwards. Participle (raspberry) is it like a bicycle? I still don’t know what that word means. Adjective, most can’t even pronounce it correctly. In the first grade just leaning words and how to use them, you are supposed to know long LATIN words first. Incredibly stupid, beyond belief, yet part of our screwed ed system! I learned more in a 10th grade retarded english class with a prewar book called Common Sense English, than all the other years together.
    Namer, Teller, Doer. No Latin required. Education has got to get rid of rigmarole.
    It’s the twenty-first century! The Middle Ages still determine how we count and tell time, no zero. 12345678910 not 0123456789 and rulers have a one in the zeroth inch, and a two in the first inch. Even describing this shows a problem.

  4. echodelta: you can’t apply base0 to real life. When there is not an inch, then it’s 0 if you have one inch, then it’s 1 and so on. you don’t have the zeroth inch, because there is not inch. Press you fingers together and try to measure the inch between them…there is none! so…0 inches.

    Also the base0 system is used for addressing not for counting. you have address 0, address 1 and so on. but you have no inches, one inch, two inches and so on.

    Isn’t it ironical, that a german has to explain this?

  5. @Ben: well, you did understand, what i was talking about, didn’t you? :)

    And i’m not picky, those are just totally different things.

    PS: You’re free to tell me how it would be called correctly ;)

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