I bought an solid Elliptical from a local fitness shop recently which had an electronic tracking device attached to it. The device uses an encoder attached to the elliptical wheel to measure certain parameters of my workout such as Distance, Speed and Calories. Although these were good indicators for my basic workout, I realized that these measurements were based on certain assumptions made by the manufacturer and does not account for all body types. Therefore, for me they were wrong. So I decided to build my own display and while I am at it, try to figure out what I can do upload by workout to Strava when I am done.
John N. G. Samarasinghe
I bought an solid Elliptical from a local fitness shop recently which had an electronic tracking device attached to it. The device uses an encoder attached to the elliptical wheel to measure certain parameters of my workout such as Distance, Speed and Calories. Although these were good indicators for my basic workout, I realized that these measurements were based on certain assumptions made by the manufacturer and does not account for all body types. Therefore, for me they were wrong. So I decided to build my own display and while I am at it, try to figure out what I can do upload by workout to Strava when I am done.
2021-09-01
Elliptical, Workout, Arduino, Electronics, IoT
The elliptical that I proudly purchased from my go to fitness store was a solid purchase with only 1 drawback. This is the electronic workout tracking system which measures time, speed, distance, calories and recovery through input from an encoder attached to the main elliptical wheel. Since the information on this system was tracking based on certain assumptions, I wanted to overhaul this system and build my own.
There is not many parameters you can measure reliably with only an encoder. Hence, I decided to stick to the basics. After some basic research on the measurement of different parameters I have chosen the below parameters
- Running time (with quick pause when workout has been stopped)
- Number of steps
- Pace - Steps per minute
I decided not to use distance and calories as they are assumptions based on the body type, running speed, running pace, heart rate and size of the machine. Since these cannot be easily measured i stuck to simple measurements where I will be able to track my running time against the number of steps I have taken against a fixed resistance.
For this project I found an old 2 line LCD display and hooked it up to a NodeMCU and my old battery pack. This project was then balled up and fitted in to an old container I found lying around which was the perfect size to fit on to the elliptical in place of the exisiting electronic workout tracker.
The firmware for the NodeMCU was written on the Arduino IDE and can be found on my github repository, here. A few features were also added at this stage where
- it gives an indication when I am maintaining my pace above 150 steps per minute.
- it connects to my home WiFi network during the start-up stage
- it connects to NTP client and updates the time (for the next stage of the project)
Version 1 - Testing out Distance
Version 2 - Basic version
Next I will be working on the Ghost Running mode + Strava connect for this project
See other projects and posts in the same category as this post
Elliptical Overhaul | ||
I bought an solid Elliptical from a local fitness shop recently which had an electronic tracking device attached to it. The device uses an encoder attached to the elliptical wheel to measure certain parameters of my workout such as Distance, Speed and Calories. Although these were good indicators for my basic workout, I realized that these measurements were based on certain assumptions made by the manufacturer and does not account for all body types. Therefore, for me they were wrong. So I decided to build my own display and while I am at it, try to figure out what I can do upload by workout to Strava when I am done. | ||
Elliptical, Workout, Arduino, Electronics, IoT | 2021-09-01 | Read More.... |