Slashdot Mirror
Palm on a Bicycle
jcwise writes: "Want to use your Palm or Handspring as a bike computer? Here are two different products that use completely different approaches. I'm not sure if either are better than a $30 bike computer. With PDA prices falling, it might be a fun hack."
all that's missing is a little meter that keeps track of how much time you're wasting by building this system.
mp3s by me
I had this back in 1999. There's a shareware program that does all this and simply connects to a el-cheapo bike "puter" and uses it's reed switch as the pulse input on the rs232 port.
it was nice, graphs, averages, etc... it just sucked down batteries like mad. but it was a great addition to my recumbent trike.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So, you're riding along, and you're like, shoot, where am I going agian? So you whip out that handy stylus for that PDA, and you start writing. Pretty soon, you realize that you've let go of your handle bars, and run into one of those light posts that keep intruding where you bike.
Note that "BikeBrain is compatible with Pilot 1000/5000, PalmPilot Professional/ Personal, Palm III/x/e, Palm V/x. We do not support the Palm VII yet. " so you do not need the latest and greatest yet. Heck, you can get a Palm iiie in the palm store right now for under $80 bucks, plus shipping. That is not bad.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
is to get the magellan GPS unit. You get speed, plus you can create a log of your actual route. Absolute altitude is terrible on all GPS units, but you may be able to a pretty good slope reading. THe unit sends normal NMEA strings over a serial connection, so it's relatively trivial to write software for.
Magellan receivers lock on fast, and the handpring/magellan handspring module makes a nice, clean combination (relatively compact as a system, no external cables).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If one had an old PDA lying around, this might be fun to try.
But the form factor of the PDA seems less than ideal for biking. Bike computers are generally a lot smaller than a Palm and the Bikini approach in particular looks unwieldy. Besides, if I'm going to mount something that big onto my bike, it had better have a GPS receiver built in.
I go through at least a computer a year on my roadbike, for some reason or other. Mountain bike I've given up and just ride it and always just have to wonder how much more suffering until the end of the race.
I saw the movie Collateral Damage last night -- The Arnold S. movie about a fireman seeking vengeance on a Columbian terrorist that was postponed for obvious reasons.
One scene near the end has the villian using a Palm IIIc (IIRC) with map software to navigate the tunnels beneath some capital building. He had it hooked up to his motorcycle, and presumably with a gps, as it was showing him where he was in real time.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
With PDA prices falling, it might be a fun hack."
It's not much of a hack if someone's done it before you and gave you instructions on how to do it yourself.
"Yes officer someone stole my computer."
"I see, is there anything that would distinguish it as yours?"
"Yes, it was attached to a blue Trek 5500 with a raccoon tail on the back of the seat."
I have a couple of the little Vetta and Cat Eye computers (well, hardly computers) on my bike already, just for mileage, speed, etc (I was going downhill about 37 mph yesterday on my mountain bike, whee!) and they're pretty good for basic information. For a few bucks more you can get heartrate and cadence (how fast you pedal) monitors. Bikebrain has had a nice unit which offers pretty much everything for quite a while, there are some high marks for it on rec.bicycles.* newsgroups. I bought a Garmin eTrex GPS to keep track of my rides, hikes, etc, and it has a little bracket which I can put on my handlebar and take it off easily (important since the mountain bike requires major hosing down after most rides) It's shock resistant to some large number of G's, more than I'd survive
It's important to remember that riding with one of these things it's not likely to take much of a beating, since you pretty much have to be there with it and it it's too much for it, you're probably splattered by now. Thou I'm not sure how well a hard disk might work in one, I wouldn't recomend it.
Biggest concerns will actaully be water/dust resistance, since this is what you get in the great outdoors, possibly heat if you ride in the sun a lot (LCD displays turn black if they get too warm, lot of help that would be), other concern is weight. Many riders try to strip weight off bikes, because it takes incrementally more energy to haul it up hills. Tiny Cat Eye and Vetta computers are ideal for everyday riding, where a bike computer I'd only use to chart rides, same as I do with my GPS, to get an idea of the profile and perhaps what cadence worked or didn't for me in the long run. Leave the heavy bits home when you're really out for a ride.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't think a palm would last much after my first good wipeout. I use a Garmin etrex GPS (rugged, waterproof, small, and only $100). It records all the same stuff a bike computer does except cadence (although the palm units don't seem to do cadence either), plus it can tell you your route and so forth. It doesn't need to have any wheel sensors and extra wires strapped to the bike since it does all its measurement via satellite signal. It's a lot smaller than a palm, too (although somewhat bigger than a $30 bike 'puter) They sell a handlebar mount for it, and the computer sync cable lets you save your ride data and load route data in advance.
But bicycle-based computing is hardly a new idea. This guy was doing it back in the days of the TRS-80 Model 100, and has written extensively about it. IIRC, there was a column in Byte or Creative Computing chronicling his adventures in "Computing Across America."
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I don't know if it's my non-typical slashdot lifestyle, but I use my bike as my primary means of transportation. I live in Brooklyn, but affairs call me into the city nearly every day, so I end up biking about 6 to 12 miles 5 days a week. This would be a great secondary (albeit fringe) application for a handheld.
As for the breakage issue, I've been riding in Manhattan traffic for over 2 years now, and I've only had one accident so far. I've broken a lot more things by just dropping my backpack than I have wrecking my bike.
Finally, I think this could be the tool for messengers. I've done a bit of it and my roomate paid rent for a while pulling tags. The difference between a successful and unsuccessful bike messenger is not speed, its knowing where you're going and knowing how to get around the inside of buildings you make deliveries to. This would make a great on-board asset for professional messengers as it would allow them to share routes, both on the street and in buildings.
Think ahead a few years and a wireless connection would let dispatch download the next pickup or drop directly to the messenger's onboard computer. It would make them work a lot more like UPS or fedex.
Howard Dean for president
Tape the PDA to your spokes for that cool noise effect.
"And like that
Yeah right, like I'm going to put a fragile $300 PalmPilot onmy mountain bike when I go terrorizing up and down trails and downtown urban rides.
There's really no use for this stuff, as there are bike computers that are more versatile than this which are cheaper and better integrated with the bike.
Take for example Shimano's excellent Flight Deck technology, which integrates with their higher-level drivetrain components (XT, XTR, Ultegra, and Dura-Ace).
Don't ride Shimano? No problem! CatEye makes excellent bike computers as well!
Another major consideration would be weight. Most PalmPilots weigh about 1/2 a pound (200g). That's a huge weight penalty, especially considering most people do everything they can to lighten their bikes.
Moral of story: good attempt, but bad idea. I'll stick with my Flight Deck.
A better hack would be to make my $30 bike computer store my address book and calendar...
You might be thinking of the guy who built the BEHEMOTH recumbant bike, with the trailer.
He had WAY more than a Mac plus. As I recall, he had a Mac, a Sun Workstation, and a PC all networked with wireless internet access, integrated GPS, and a credit card verifer for when he did consulting as he travelled.
He had some strange buttons on his handlebars for typing, and one of the military inspired "cobra helicopter" eyepieces for viewing his screen.
I don't have time to search for a link, but I'm sure it's out there.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
It looks like BikeBrain has an altimeter in it, so it can also give you data like what your best time on a hill was, adjusted by the grade of the hill.
It looks like it has an altimeter, but it doesn't.
It keeps track of how far you have gone on your ride, and if it has a route plan that includes altitude, it shows what your altitude ought to be if you are following the route plan. The altitude graph, alas, will not work right if you alter the route slightly, or ride some completely new route.
There are bike computer systems with altimeters built in, and one of those would be better.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I looked into using a Palm for a bike computer, and concluded that I wasn't very interested. I live in the Seattle area, and I ride in the rain. The BikeBrain solution comes with a plastic protector for your Palm, but it isn't really waterproof.
The good thing of course is that a Palm can capture a lot of data. But just capturing wheel spin data to show speed and distance isn't enough to make me buy either of these solutions.
Last autumn I bought myself a Specialized P.Brain computer. I love it; it collects wheel turn data (like the two Palm solutions) and also altitude and heart rate data. A PC interface lets you capture your data and make pretty charts. You can get a graph showing your speed, altitude, and heart rate plotted against either time or distance. Read more about it here.
The PC download software is for Windows; I'm planning to try to get it working under WINE if I can. The data is stored in some opaque binary format, but you can get the data out with Dan Connelly's Perl script (get it here.
The P.Brain isn't the only data-collecting bike computer. There are other brands. I have heard good things about the Polar XTrainer. There are even computer systems that directly measure your power output; you have a wheel built with a power-measuring hub, and the computer keeps track of power. Pro riders (including Lance Armstrong) use these. For example, the Power-Tap.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It's because you losing five pounds isn't nearly as important as the bike losing a few pounds, especially in rotational weight (rims, spokes, tubes, tires). Pedalling an 18 pound bike versus a 23 pound bike is much easier, regardless of your weight.
Urm; why don't they give out cycling jerseys instead?
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
As a cyclist, allow me to cluebat you in.
A bike computer is a small (or, in this case, not-so-small) device attached to the handlebars of your trusty steed. The cheaper computers only track speed, distance, and trip time; and the more expensive computers (when mated with the appropriate components[1]) can track altitute, position, and even cadence -- the last of these being vital to any moderately serious road cyclist.
So; almost all bikes nowadays are equipped with computers; the Palm just provides a larger display. Since it can't track cadence, however, it would be useless to pretty much any road cyclist. The fact that Palms don't absorb repedative shock all too well rules mountain biking out. However, the large display size makes a Palm almost ideal for recumbent cyclists.
[1] For example, the Flight Deck computers must be mated with Shimano 105 (or better) components.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
I rode my bike to school for about a year, before I had a driver's license. This involved riding in heavy rush-hour traffic on some of the busiest roads in my area (Beaverton, Oregon if you're curious). I developed a great respect for cars after I hit a patch of ice at an intersection, my bike slipped out from under me, and I ended up sprawled on my stomach in the middle of the busy intersection, with cars swerving and honking and trying not to run me over.
Now, to their credit, while I tend to have the same animosity towards other drivers as I have towards cyclists, when I was riding my bike to school I don't ever recall an incident where my life was put in danger by something unlawful that a driver did. The only times I was ever in any danger were the times I made a stupid mistake or ignored a traffic law.
Thus, it really pisses me off when cyclists ignore the laws that are there for their own protection. A lot of cyclists don't seem to understand just how difficult it is even to see them, much less avoid hitting them when they pop out of nowhere. I'm all for bicyclists, but I would really rather not run one over just because they're being stupid.