Programmable treadmill?

WithCheesePlease

Hey,

Just wondering if anyone knows of any programmable treadmills? I know treadmills come with built-in programs. I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a way to transfer their own programs onto a treadmill?? Kind of like an API for getting your own program (just with overall distance and gradients along the way) onto a treadmill?? So you could say plug in a USB key with all your own personal programs on it.

Sorry if this is a bit techy for this forum, but just wondering if anyone here had come across anything like this? I don't know if there are any treadmills that allow for this kind of thing?

plodder

Are you sure that would be a good idea? Just think what would happen the first time you load up that buggy piece of software ...

silverside

lol @ plodder

that seems like a horrible idea to me, would you not just go for a run and say to yourself "once i get to paddy's house ill run fast for five minutes then cross the river and jog it out for a bit"

horses for courses tho

seriously i know some of the gps watches you can set up ghost courses like you suggest, not sure of the details

donothoponpop

No C++ or Ruby Rails, just plain old BASIC:

10 GOTO frontdoor
20 RUN

(Sorry!;))

--amadeus--

Don't you need an EXIT or END clause there or have you morphed into Forrest Gump?

RacoonQueen

The ones we used in college you could set up a programme on(intervals, hills etc etc) can't for the life of me remember the brand though.

Slogger Jogger

--amadeus-- wrote: »

Don't you need an EXIT or END clause there or have you morphed into Forrest Gump?

Or Ultraman

WithCheesePlease

Thanks for some of the, erm, imaginative suggestions!

I know it may seem nuts, but it's just a little project I'm working on. Say you're used to your route outside and you know it has a big hill 4 miles in but you don't want to have to go pushing all the buttons yourself as you're going. I know... But just something I was looking into.

plodder

Actually, it's an interesting idea. You could take a "course" from a Garmin GPS, or some mapping program, convert it into a format the treadmill would understand, and load it using a USB stick.

Personally, I'm not a fan of treadmills, but I could see this having a certain novelty value at least. Though, I haven't seen a treadmill which simulates downwards gradients. That could be a problem.

--amadeus--

You could bypass the USB - the new 405 connects wirelessly and bluetooth chips are dirt cheap, especially in the context of a treadmill.

It's actually the direction I could see things going in, especially with the likes of Wii Fit and teh new Wii Active showing what can be achieved if you think outside the box

asimonov

It's good! linked to a big screen you could programme in the big ticket races like Chicago or Berlin, or simply turn the heat up, put a tea towel on your head and suffer the MdS from the comfort of your own home.

WithCheesePlease

That's pretty much exactly what I'm doing. Just wondering is there a way to get the course onto a treadmill or will I need to build my own...

BTW - no stealing my idea - it's already a work in progress and copyrighted!

Krusty_Clown

--amadeus-- wrote: »

You could bypass the USB - the new 405 connects wirelessly and bluetooth chips are dirt cheap, especially in the context of a treadmill.

Unfortunately the 405 doesn't use a generic bluetooth protocol. It's a proprietary wireless protocol (ANT Sport), which you'd probably have to license from Garmin.

asimonov

Rather than manually input using a usb key - it would be much better if it just took a feed or was someway web connected, you then open up a world of applications.

At a simple level you could take down any run from garminconnect, or you could sync an event so that different people from anywhere could run a given course at the same time, with a display showing relative position / stats or Woddle could organise his weekly speed / hill workouts with runners on a global scale from woddleHQ.

I think that some rowing machines have web connectivity so they're can't be too many barriers.

WithCheesePlease

It all again just comes back to finding an out of the box treadmill that will allow this kind of connectivity functionality / can be "hacked" in some way to get new programs onto it / has an SDK or can be connected to a laptop to be remotely controlled.

I'm not looking to build a treadmill with a control unit to market here, it's just a college project where I'm just hoping to get some kind of proof of concept - where I can show a user created program running (no pun intended) on a treadmill and not just an on-screen simulation.

asimonov

gearoid_healy wrote: »

It all again just comes back to finding an out of the box treadmill that will allow this kind of connectivity functionality / can be "hacked" in some way to get new programs onto it / has an SDK or can be connected to a laptop to be remotely controlled.

I'm not looking to build a treadmill with a control unit to market here, it's just a college project where I'm just hoping to get some kind of proof of concept - where I can show a user created program running (no pun intended) on a treadmill and not just an on-screen simulation.

have you spoken to people in the industry?

WithCheesePlease

Not yet, but I'm guessing that'll have to be my next step. Was just seeing if there was anything obvious out there already that people may know of that allow for this kinda thing before having to look into other options or looking to speak to people in the industry.

hunnymonster

I think some of the bike turbos can do something similar. You load up a particular course and the resistance of the turbo is adjusted to give you the correct gradient. Is it the i-magic from tacx?

asimonov

That's probably your next step all right, best of luck with the project.

WithCheesePlease

hunnymonster wrote: »

I think some of the bike turbos can do something similar. You load up a particular course and the resistance of the turbo is adjusted to give you the correct gradient. Is it the i-magic from tacx?

Kind of, yeah. But you're still choosing from a pre defined list. I'm looking for a way to connect a treadmill to a laptop to create and transfer my own.

As asimonov said I think my best bet would be to ask somebody in industry.

Krusty_Clown

Google Search: +USB +programmable treadmills

This thread is actually the top hit, but after a couple of anomolous hits, you'll see the wonderfully named Body Sculpture BT-6200IK-C-CD, which features:

a PC USB training software and USB keys to monitor you progress

As someone else mentioned, the Garmin series upload their data in XML format, so if you can find out what formats are supported by the treadmill software, you could perhaps do some form of transformation of the Garmin data, to the accepted treadmill format.

Here's an article about some companies that do something similar already: Now Downloading

How come there was no google when I was in college?

WithCheesePlease

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

How come there was no google when I was in college?

Google and Wikipedia, you've gotta love 'em!

WithCheesePlease

More googling has lead me to this - http://dailyburn.com/forums/fitness_and_exercise/topics/treadmill_with_usb_input

There's a Life Fitness treadmill that lets you create interval programs on a treadmill and save them off to a USB key. So I'm guessing you can obviously go the other way with it too and have the treadmill understand routes form the USB key.