Like many office workers, [David Kong] found himself the lucky recipient of a motorized sit-stand desk. Also like most office workers with such a desk, he found himself mostly sitting. Reminders on his phone did little to change habits and [David] resolved to automate his desk to rise on a schedule.
Taking off the front panel of the control box required a few screws and [David] was delighted to find some testing pins right on the PCB.By connecting the right pins together, he could simulate any button being pressed. A Toshiba TLP222A solid-state relay made it simple to connect the pins together, the next step was triggering the relay on some sort of timer.
Speaking of timers, the oft-lauded 555 timer was considered. However, the length of time desired wasn’t as well suited for the 555, and the appeal of just tweaking a file to adjust the interval was tempting. Going to the other end of the spectrum, [David] had a Raspberry Pi zero laying around he had been meaning to play with.
After soldering the relay to pin 17 and writing a quick 10 line python script that is executed on startup, [David] had a working solution that could be taped to the underside of the desk, out of sight. Rather than being on a fixed timer, the desk raises every 45 to 60 minutes. The impact on his life has been wonderful, which was the goal of this particular project. It’s been a few months and he hasn’t had to tweak or fix anything. Is a whole 64-bit multicore processor a bit of an overkill for toggling a pin every hour or so? Yes. But we can’t really fault him for reaching for what was already lying around. The results speak for themselves.
Perhaps this would be something you would incorporate when you’re building your own standing desk?
but isn’t the pi zero single core and 32-bit?
Indeed:
« The Broadcom BCM2835, ARM11 32-bit CPU is the same as found in the original Raspberry Pi 1, but it has been overclocked to 1 GHz. »
— https://www.tomshardware.com/features/raspberry-pi-zero
The argument still stands though, I don’t think this much changes how overkill this is :)
Missed opportunity here, they could have used an AMD RYZEN
Just do what I did and ditch the chair completely. *taps forehead* you can’t sit if you don’t have a chair.
Nice!! =D
Autonomous.ai sold me a standing desk years ago with a built in touch screen- powered by a raspberry pi, which had the same ability
All it needs now is a motorized chair so you are not interrupted.
No one? Really? Ok, fine: “I think this could have been done with a 555 timer.” Whew, I feel better now.
Im like 96% sure having movement without user interaction is illegal.
Maybe not illegal, but likely ill-advised, and likely to give the legal department some more grey hairs.
Thankfully I doubt that’s much of a concern here.
Just sound an alarm before the height changes! Another nice little project to do on his Pi.
BTW a great project 😁😁
My standing desk came with a high chair and a little app that tells me to switch every 20 min. Works like a charm.
If those desks existed in 2001 you could’ve made a killing by selling a PCI Card to do that job.
We built one of these with a camera. It moves up or down based on the level of your eyes. Add camera and OpenCV, and you are good.