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BikeBrain - PalmPilot Based Bike computer
Wirehead writes "VeloTrend
BikeBrain is a new class of bicycle computer that
incorporates graphical displays, route directions, dynamic logging
and smart features such as automatic wheel
size calibration into a multi-use,
hand-held and handlebar mounted computer.
It is designed for use with 3Com's Palm series of
personal organizers. " Cute. Although I suppose
you have to go outside to use it.
I can attest from experience that most hardcore bikers will pay any outrageous sum of money for something to show up other bikers. How else could bike prices climb over $1000?
-Getting along fine with my Trek 6000 sans PP
I wonder why they don't include an mp3 decoder. This is the first feature I would think of with a device like that and it shouldn't be too hard to do, either.
I'm quite amazed no one has asked this yet, but..
;)
Will it work on Linux??
I read the requirements and it says Mac/PC software,
plus you MUST have the Palm Organizer (whatever that is).
If this thing will work via Linux, then I'm sold.
I've been trying to come up with excuses to get one
and this is the final straw in the hat.
PS. Malda, you're a lazy fscker
Check out http://www.orbits.com/Palm/ for some Pilot utilities for Linux. pilot-link is pretty fscking useful, though I think the development rate has dropped off recently.
Here you find program and information about how to do this yourself. Pretty cool/geeky stuff. If only the Pilot had better case... _jon
This is completely OT and should be in the Slashdot FAQ. But it isn't. What does the (score: 1) or (score: x) mean? Who sets it? Is lower better? Or higher? Who sets it? What is it?
And, the answer is no. The Palm 3's 16Mhz processor is a little short on power. The 2 meg would make a nice 1 minute loop (figure 1 meg for player) but that'd get tiring. And the Palm's Piezo speaker can't even make dtmf (dial tones, so that if it could you could hold the palm up to the phone and it'd dial the phone directly from the db) tones... strike three. If you want audio, there are many better options. Buy a Rio, a MD player, or just burn your own audio cd's....
In the extreme, let's say you encounter your 50
;)
potholes within one mile (and if that's true, you
need to move to a better maintained city!) Your
"significant" 100 feet becomes less than 2% error.
Not too bad (and I don't know why you would be so
worried about 100' on a bike!) And if you didn't
skip math class, you would realize that number
starts dwindling as you go further.
The only real error here besides your terrible
calculation is the diameter of the wheel. Unless
of course you put your meter on the front wheel and
ride a wheelie for 50 miles.
Stupid idea. They will sell 1, maybe 2 units. I have a Cannondale, and wouldn't ruin it with some stupid oversized overpowered computer on it. The computer I have only cost $25, is lighter and the batteries last (or have lasted) 4 years.
At 4:06pm EST the VeloTrend.com host used up all of its availible bandwidth. So much for the infamous slashdot effect. Guess i'll have to wait till midnight to see what this thing is.
/.
That's why the 'I'm here' button is there. The docs make it look like you hit the button when you reach a turn or a landmark. This would reset it to be the correct distance traveled. At least that is what I got out of reading the article. I could be way off....
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27, @04:01
Ride a $500 bike and then ride on a $1,600 bike. If you can't tell the huge difference, your problem. The people I personally feel sorry for are the idiots that fork out $15,000 for a new car every 4-5 years. My last car cost $800 and costs about $60/month for gas, insurance, and
I have to agree with the car observation. It isn't always so easy to locate a reliable $1000 car, though. As far as the bike, I've ridden $500 and $1500 bikes, and I still believe that the quality tapers off at around $500-600, so that a $1500 bike is 20% better at 300% the price. Unless you're Hans Rey, you mainly bike on weekends, and don't need a full suspension. In this case, a low end Trek or a Giant is perfectly fine. No one needs to blow thousands on a Raven or high-end Gary Fisher. It's a lot like computers... you can buy one in the sweet spot for $750 or so, or pay $3000 for the bleeding edge and get a 40% performance gain. Bah. I don't like the fact that biking is becoming a rich man's sport.
Is it also illegal to drive your car with closed doors? Guess not. So i'll happily use headphones on my bike, i'll hear just as much as the average car driver.
What would be really cool is a HUD for your helmet :-) :-)
The technology would have to be pretty small otherwise you'd end up looking like a fighter pilot on a bicycle
> [...]anything more dangerous than biking in > traffic while talking on the phone.
Biking while drunk, while talking on a cell, while riding over a 30' high railroad overpass with sub-OSHA standard railings at night at speed. The fact that I'm not already dead due to my own stupidity is a quite a testament to 1000s of years of evolution. And we think we're getting smarter... we're just better engineered with each gen.
...and then there's Albert Hofman day at all those colleges around the country (uh... world). First night I ran into all those saucer-eyed, beach cruiser mutants riding around campus, I really did have to stop and ask myself if someone had slipped me something...
Sigh... I DO miss scholastics...
Now thats something Ive been dreaming of since I was a boy.
Cool idea, but how well is a PalmPilot going to stand up to rain, mud, bumps, wiping out, etc.?
$90 for the kit, not including the Pilot. I wish I had more money lying around for toys like this...
Link to either an onboard system, or link to cell phone and have yourself a nice turn by turn map for unfamiliar parts of the city. Have it log data on time taken vs. time of day and create smarter faster routes each time you use it.
Stupid idea. For $250 I can get a handheld
GPS unit that has large built-in LCD display
containing maps of the US, and can tell me
my speed, location etc. etc. and is weather-
proof, and you could actually walk
around with it or hike with it.
Looks pretty interesting.. Don't know how rugged (or how expensive, eesh) this would be, but if I had the money..
I think I'll just stick with my $20 Cateye Micro for now...
I hear you can get skin cancer if you go outside too much. Guess I won't have to worry about that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by korto:
you mean we are supposed to put a palmtop on the bike?
what if we fall? is the palmtop supposed to wear a helmet? or is he going to be like erwin when his palmtop became smashed?
Posted by jonrx:
Well, it depends if your sensor is hooked on the front wheel or the back wheel. The back wheel will *always* travel shorter distance. (Hmmm maybe I should move my sensor to the back wheel, it should give more accurate readings. (in theory))
jonr
Posted by Zyca:
GPS have direction finding ability... so you CAN do without compass... (make sure you get the GPS that's fully ruggized to take the beating)...
And what happens if you do an endo? Or if it rains? I hope they have ruggedization options, as a "skin tight case" doesn't say much... :)
I have a bike computer on my bike, 7 functions, 2 buttons. And you know anything more complex would be bad. At 20-30 MPH down major city roads you just *CANT* have the distraction. I'm much to busy not getting hit by a bus.
--Zachary Kessin
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Can I take the Pilot out of the splash/shock cover thingy and use it for its normal use when I'm not on my bike?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I can think of a *very* good reason they didn't put an MP3 decoder on it: People who listen to stereo headphones while riding tend to end up being washed out of the treads of dumptrucks with a garden hose.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
There's a Pilot app named Bikini which is dated June '97, IIRC. I have demo somewhere on my harddisk. BikeBrain is not a very novel idea.
--Martin
And I think we killed the site. Wish my site was killed for once
-- The unsig...
You won't experience the /.-effect unless you have something cool on your site.
-bjl
Anybody who's worked with mobile robots will tell you that wheel rotation counting tends to accumulate huge errors. When you start biking, you will probably be off by a few feet (since you can hardly start at the very same point every time), and every time you swerve to avoid a pothole, or take a wider/tighter turn, you will be accumulating more errors. Eventually, your measurments will be totally off.
(will you swerve around 50 potholes during your ride? Easily. At 2ft error per pothole, you're looking at total 100ft error. That's considerable).
What I would like to see is syncronizing odometry data with GPS. This way the odometry will fill in when you can't get GPS signal, and GPS will correct odometry errors.
A dream gadget? How about a cellphone with a helmet-mounted headset and voice activated dialing? I have never done anything more dangerous than biking in traffic while talking on the phone.
Me and my friends have this bike capture-the-flag game that is played over a large area (about 20x20 city blocks and a large park), and cellphones are my team's secret weapon!
MaxZ
--> Any fool can criticize - and many do --
Unless you're Hans Rey, you mainly bike on weekends
Doesn't anyone else use a bike for commuting? Sheesh, it's not difficult, it's inexpensive, as quick as a car (often quicker) and sets you up for the day.
Don't know why anyone would want all that gadgetry on a bike, though. All it could to is add weight, rattle, fall off, get damaged in the rain, or get stolen. And eyes should be kept on the surroundings -- you'll run into them otherwise...
Totally cool would be if you cycle past another person with a 'Bike Brain' and it flashes the route they are taking to yours, or sends you a message or something. Saves you having to wave and exchange pleasantries with fellow passing cyclists!
GPS does work well in heavily forested areas. I was in the Superior National forest in Northern Minnessota with my GPS, a Magellan 4000XL that I spent 300 dollars on, and I was recieving signals frojm 8-10 satellites the whole time I was up there. BTW I still have a waypoint stored in my GPS of a nice lil clifftop in the Boundary Waters Canoe area.
Food: It's whats for dinner
Mountain bikes: I have no idea, I snub them.
Hah! I have a track bike (no derailleurs, no brakes, no freewheel). Not only do I snub road bikes, but I snub most track bikes, because mine has inch pitch gears. So there. I love the looks of you modern day wonders when I say I ride a 7 in the back.
--
Infuriate left and right
How can you patent a route directions finder? Isn't this just software or are they patenting the display? The automatic wheel calibration should be wheel diameter database included. I don't see anything automatic about selecting your wheel size.
If I biked and had the money, this could be cool.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
That site is apparently limited in their hits/bandwidth.... I'm curious how long it took them to reach the 50K hit limit after being /.ed.... This is the URL to their hosting page for those of you interested in a low traffic site :)
http://www.best.com/services/hosting/
Zanthor
This is intended for serious sport bikers who need to know, for example, how well they did on this route compared to last time, not to mention up-to-the-minute info on how well they are DOING, so they can speed up or slack off as necessary. Also, this is the kind of info that is routinely available on gym exercise equipment, so anyone who prefers getting outside on their bike to sitting in a ho-hum gym should be interested.
....)
I know I am!
(What a bunch of Luddites
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
It's called "GPS receiver plus optional serial cable".
I don't know the PalmPilot, but if it's worth its salt, it will have a serial port and can be programmed. The lingo that you should use to talk to your GPS is fairly well documented.
Voila!
--B
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