Revision as of 08:08, 28 August 2008

Just ordered my FreeRunner.

I want to use it as bicycle computer.

These are just ideas and wishes - not worth to make a separate wiki page.

Bicycle Computer

Biking

Existing Projects and Experiences

• http://projects.openmoko.org/projects/mokosport/ Dead
• http://blogs.thehumanjourney.net/finds/entry/20080306 Joseph Reeves uses its NEO1973 on a bicycle
• http://projects.openmoko.org/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=gps&Search=Search
• http://www.pearl.de/a-PX2065-4044.shtml

Power Supply

Due to the relatively high current consumption of the Freerunner a power supply from a hub dynamo seems to be unavoidable.

I skip the switch mode regulator and will use simple Z-Diode parallel to the Freerunner. Later I want to add an LED light parallel to both.

GPS

Existing Software

• Navit
• TangoGPS
• GPS_Sight?
• GPS_Data_Logger

Getting GPS Data

On Freerunner there is no need to read from gpsd or similar. I just can get the data from /dev/ttySAC1

Additional GPS Functions

Altitude Plots

Of the travelled track and also of the upcoming (hopefully OSM will soon provide elevation information of the roads)

Trip Information

Garmin Etrex Legends trip information display is to stupid. I want infos for the current day and for the time since last break.

Slope, Vertical Speed

The GPS does not give sufficiently accurate vertical speed. A barometric sensor (see Variometer) would be nice. Calculation of the vertical speed by integrating the accelerometer readings also not accurate. But maybe it is possible to use the accelerometers to measure the slope of the road. How to calibrate it? Is it possible to automatically calibrate it from GSP reading?

Sideward Inclination of the Bicycle

By measuring the increase of the total acceleration not by change of the acceleration angle.

Road Quality

Can the road (e.i. surface) quality be recorded by measuring the vibrations with the accelerometers?

Car Counter

... using the builtin microphone. Or would it be possible with the accelerometers using high sampling rate?

Heart Rate Monitor

Are there Bluetooth Heart Rate Transmitters available?

Pedalling Frequency

Pedal sensors with Bluetooth and power supply by magnetic induction would be nice.

Otherwise USB with an FTDI chip.

Programming

Language

Python

UI

python-etk could not find any documentation yet. Seems to be the same as python-gtk.

I don't want to have eye-candies. Maybe Eye-candies is neccessary for selling phones. Eye-candies cause eyc-caries or even brain-caries. ;-) It is for gamers.

Colors are o.k. if they carry information. Gradients of menu bars are useless and annoying.

Plotting

matplotlib? might be an overkill. Anything usable lightweight available?

Jogging

Accelerometer

Mount the Freerunner to the shin and measure the damping and motion style with different shoes at various speeds. Especially interesting to watch the aging of the shoes (different damping).

Openstreetmap

• GPS-Trail currently only dicussions there

I would like to have a simple application to add map information at my current location. Say, I am standing beneath an ATM, just use a menu item "Add ATM" and typing in its name - finished. There is no need for a map display. The program just displays the OSM nodes near the current location. And you can add a new node or modify an existing node.

Other Accelerometer Ideas

• Indoor use of those GPS games
• Programming a Marble game would be more fun than playing it
• Moving within a larger virtual screen by tilting the display.

More Brainstorming

Midi Input via Touchscreen

There is not much space to use the touchscreen as an ordinary piano keyboard.

What about using the touchscreen like the left hand fingering on a guitar, mandolin, banjo ore similar? The touchscreen lays in front of you in landscape mode. There are four rows, one for each finger.

 | D# | G  | B  | d# |
 | D  | F# | A# | d  |
 | C# | F  | A  | c# |
 | C  | E  | G# | c  |
 This layout might be to simple. Should it be optimized for easy chord playing?

Octave shifting via accelerometer reading?

Similiar project: http://www.neo1973-germany.de/wiki/epiano Obviously not what I am having in mind.