The Webcycle for the Internet Junkie
Is your desire/addiction the web strong enough to pull you away from the information superhighway onto an exercise bike in order to keep you plugged in? The webcycle is a bicycle which controls your internet speed based upon how quickly you’re pedaling. It’s catchphrase is: the faster you pedal, the faster your internet goes.
The concept might remind you off the way couch potatoes use the exercise bike. Right in front of a television set. But the webcycle does one better (or worse) by making your browsing hinge around your pedaling. Here’s how the webcycle has been put together:
Wires on each pedal are connected to foil sensors on the bike which interfaces with an Arduino. The Arduino reads the RPM of the bike and transmits it to an old laptop running Ubuntu. The OS is installed with shell scripts and Wondershaper which is an easy to use traffic shaping script. It allows for browsing at reasonable speeds and streamlines uploads and downloads.
At HacknMod, we love Arduino projects and that’s why we have a whole lot of them in our Arduino section. And if you are a pedal pusher check these out too:
