Racking Up Miles On A Bicycle Odometer

February 25, 2011 by Noah Dunker 27 Comments

[jonh] religiously tracks the miles he rides on his bicycle. When his odometer’s battery started getting low, he wanted a way to run the miles up to where they were before, since replacing the battery resets everything to zero. [jonh] used an Atmel microcontroller to run up the miles on his bike computer so he could pick right back up where he left off. There is definitely a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off joke in here somewhere.

The bike computer itself is designed to plug into a base that connects to a magnet-triggered reed relay. It uses a wheel-mounted magnet to count the number of revolutions made and thus the distance traveled. [jonh] hooked up a simple microcontroller-driven circuit to these connectors to trick the bike computer into thinking it was moving, and moving fast! Since he knew the number of miles he wanted to sandbag onto the odometer, he was able to program it to run up the proper amount of miles and then stop. There’s no source code listing for the project, but this shouldn’t be too hard to reproduce. He provides a pencil-drawn schematic for the connection to the cyclometer from the microcontroller. At the end, there’s also some sage advice for those of you who are interested in building a decent hardware hacking lab on the cheap.

Hackaday Links: February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

PCB Stand

Part PCB, part old IC, and held together with hot glue. It doesn’t take much to make this electronics stand, but it’ll certainly add to the geek level of your desk.

Decorate with light

This busy living room is actually decorated all in white. The patterns that give it life are on lend from a projector and what we’d imagine is some fantastic software. [Thanks MDV]

Flashing butt on your bike

[Eli] sewed lights and flex sensor into her jeans. Now her butt flashes in heart-shaped patterns as she rides. She actually robbed one of the flex sensors from this project to complete that explosive high-five project.

Mini-rake’s progress

A lathe and some sand that needs tending is all that [Spatula Tzar] needed to get this zen garden rake under way. We like how she used a vacuum bag to infuse the wood with mineral oil.

Paper and electrons

This collection of musical projects forsakes common substrates and builds the mess of circuit boards on pieces of paper. Not much information but the strangeness is worth a look.

SkyWalker: A Really Really Tall Bike

January 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

[Brad Graham] enjoys building bikes. He threw together a tall bike called the SkyWalker and then shared the build details (link dead, try the Internet Archive version). It’s got everything you’d expect in a fixed-gear bike; a seat, pedals, steering, and two wheels. You’ll have to do a bit of climbing to get into the saddle but the incorporated ladder doubles as passenger space. [Brad] says the thing has no problem supporting up to four riders at a time. Check out the video after the break to see that the ladder and large-height steering frame make the bike easy to stop and start without leaning on something. Wow.

We’re thrilled and scared at the same time. At least that over-under tandem had full-sized wheels. But those tiny rims on this oblong creation? Yikes!

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Steam Cycle Feels Like Your Pants Are On Fire

January 8, 2011 by Mike Szczys 54 Comments

Usually we don’t like to feature projects that have zero build details, saving them instead for a links post. But this steam-powered bicycle is too… peculiar to pass up. In between the rider’s legs is the firebox that contains a wood-fueled fire. Watch the clip after the break and you’ll find just how noisy this contraption can be. In addition to the mid-range “chug-a chug-a” there’s also the constant whistle we’d attribute to the pressure regulator. It’s surprising that the whole bike doesn’t heat up, but it must not be all that bad since the test pilot isn’t wearing asbestos pants. All kidding aside, it looks like this beast has no problem getting up to a running pace (based on the movements of the camera) and that’s thanks to a renewable energy source.

We’d be much more comfortable seeing this in a mechanized tandem form factor since we just can’t get over having a fire between our legs.

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More Bike-controlled Google-travelling

January 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

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.

AVR Programming 04: Writing Code, Etc.

November 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

Welcome back to this fourth and final installment of the series. The first three parts should have been enough to get you off the ground, but a few more learning examples wouldn’t hurt. It’s also a good time to discuss some of the other things these little chips can do. Join me after the break to:

Expand the sample code, adding features to our simple program while I challenge you to write the code yourself.
Discuss AVR fuse bits, how to use them, and what to watch out for
Touch on some of the peripherals you’ll come across in these chips

As a grand flourish to the series, I’ve used the example hardware from this final part to build a bicycle tail light. Hopefully this will inspire you to create something much more clever.

Series roadmap:

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Exercise Along To Google Street View

October 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

As part of a Master’s Thesis [Lette Moloney] made this exercise bike control Google Street View. The hardware setup is quite rudimentary, two hall effect sensors mounted next to each other detect a magnet that was hot-glued to the crank. When the magnet passes the sensors an Arduino establishes if it was a forward or backward stroke based on which sensor was tripped first. From there a keystroke is issued to Google Street View to move the virtual location accordingly.

One thing we didn’t expect until we saw the video (embedded after the break) is that traversing street view is not a smooth experience. It’s more of a slide show as you exercise. Not a big deal since the hardware setup can be reused with different virtual stimuli. One thing that comes to mind is attaching a camera to the handlebars of your bike and recording your favorite rides during the warm months so that you can replay them during your indoor winter training. Of course that’s going to require some coding to marry the Arduino data to the speed of the video playback but we want to see it done anyway. Wow, image a database that would allow folks to share point-of-view videos of their rides… it’s the only way we’d ever get to see what it’s like to climb your way up Alpe_d’Huez.

We saw a slew of these stationary bike hacks a while back. If this wets your appetite, check in on one with a wearable display, another that also uses Street View, or pedaling to the top of a miniature mountain.

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