ellbiddy
Active Member
So I got bored over the past few days and decided I'd put all my electronics junk laying around to use so I rigged up a small microcontroller (PIC16) to a hall effect sensor on my wheel and made a small magnetic wheel speed sensor. Then I'd use some super simple maths to get a good approximation to speed. Using the speed I'd send it over a serial connection to my PC which is running a botched version of VLC where it uses VLC's API to set the playback level with respect to the speed on my rear wheel which gives an adequate effect of having to mash out hills (it makes it easier if you know how fast you were going during recording, so GPS data for that is really valuable, eventually I might write something that imports data like that auto magically). I then have my "second monitor" as my 52" LCD TV with some high quality videos running.
I don't have a trainer hooked up because what I really want to do is embed some data in the audio track of the video to act as the physical "resistance" and then use that value to set the resistance of the trainer, the problem being that most trainers don't have a variable resistance setter and it's based mostly on your speed. So that when in the video you hit a hill the video sends some data over the serial port to the trainer which can mush a solenoid or something to increase the resistance. That way you have a fully interactive training thing going on. I'm still thinking about how to go about doing that last part if anyone has any ideas feel free to throw them out. Also if anyone is interested in playing with it I'm setting up all the code on SVN tonight so you can checkout the latest version (gets updated nightly).
Sometimes cycling in your underwear at home is more fun than in your lycra outside
Edit: The uC's I use are freely available as samples from microchip and the rest of the "hardware" is like 3-10$ worth most of which I have spares of laying around so if anyone wants to jerry-rig something like this it would cost next to nothing
I don't have a trainer hooked up because what I really want to do is embed some data in the audio track of the video to act as the physical "resistance" and then use that value to set the resistance of the trainer, the problem being that most trainers don't have a variable resistance setter and it's based mostly on your speed. So that when in the video you hit a hill the video sends some data over the serial port to the trainer which can mush a solenoid or something to increase the resistance. That way you have a fully interactive training thing going on. I'm still thinking about how to go about doing that last part if anyone has any ideas feel free to throw them out. Also if anyone is interested in playing with it I'm setting up all the code on SVN tonight so you can checkout the latest version (gets updated nightly).
Sometimes cycling in your underwear at home is more fun than in your lycra outside
Edit: The uC's I use are freely available as samples from microchip and the rest of the "hardware" is like 3-10$ worth most of which I have spares of laying around so if anyone wants to jerry-rig something like this it would cost next to nothing
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