My exercise bike to xbox hardware project is ready for factory production. | Hacker News Reader

My exercise bike to xbox hardware project is ready for factory production.

22 pointsacgourley19 comments

Site with promo video: http://www.pedalsense.com

I'm looking for candid feedback or advice. This is really just a side project of mine to get into hardware hacking and production. A lemonade stand, of sorts. Now that I have it ready to be produced from factories, and I have to decide if it's profitable to do so.

It isn't even a big time sink anymore, it's mostly just a capital risk. It costs me about 65 for one unit to be produced, 30 dollars for an xbox controller, and about 20 dollars in labor to pay someone to mod the controller and package everything together. So for small runs I have this product costing me about $115. This is for runs of 100, about.

The question is: do I put down $11,500 for 100 units and hope I can sell them? I don't see a lot of movement on the kickstarter pre-order page, but maybe people just don't like using kickstarter this way. But, everyone who tried it at the Maker Faire really fell in love with it. Finally, I'd love to get into the details of production of someone has questions or advice.

1. Send this video to manufacturers of the games that are likely to do well with it. Try linkedin to get a better shot at it.

2. Talk to children's fitness instructors in local gym or school. Ask them who you should be really talking to instead of them.

Both of these are likely to create a large-ish order, so that you can finance the work further.

Firstly, I love the idea, and there is, as I'm sure you're aware much greater scope than this application alone. The qualm I have is that it's currently at the intersection of gaming and exercise. I would be surprised if gyms wanted this since gym goers would feel silly, until you've got something more immersive (think VR system with tracking of goals, sprints and durations etc.). In the mean time I imagine you would have to sell it as an add-on to those with home gyms therefore.

If you're interested in talking about the idea more let me know on my public e-mail arie2007 at hotmail.co.uk.

I think if you want to sell to gyms you need a very robust system that isn't just bolted onto the exterior of the bike. Following that logic, you start to get into the game of selling exercise equipment which has been fully integrated.

You end up being http://www.expresso.com which sells some bikes with a basic video game attached. Your product is very expensive, not from a trusted name in equipment quality, and quickly feels technologically out of date.

I think there might be some interesting ways around it, but I need to think about it more.

Yeah, I think the home market is the way to go. Gaming is a big market and fitness-conscious gamers will likely be a nice long-term niche (also the parents of young gamers concerned about their health).

Clickable link: http://www.pedalsense.com

(Cool video -- looks like the kids are having a lot of fun!)

Looks pretty cool. The other thing you might think about is the fact that some people set up their (outside) bikes in a stationary trainer as a way to use them inside. This doesn't seem compatible with that sort of thing, but it seems like you might be able to modify it for that. (It would have to be easily detachable, since people would want to be able to take their bikes outside without too much trouble)

I'm not sure what the ratio of people is who own an xbox or playstation and also own a home exercise bike versus a stationary trainer for their bike, just in terms of cost (cheaper to use a regular bike you already have, or to buy both pieces rather than a nice home exercise bike) that the market would be bigger for bike+trainer than home exercise bike. I only know of one system, but I've never tried it out: http://www.tacxvr.com/en/products/fortius-multiplayer -it's very different from yours though.

At any rate, it's another pretty big market you may not have considered....

Pitch it to the "as seen on TV" companies that sell exercise equipment through infomercials perhaps.

Acgourley,

I was trying something related to joysticks last week. I read about the HID protocol and some threads on their implementation. How do you make your custom-made device recogniziable as a Bluetooth HID device? Since you are working on something similar, any examples/docs on this please?

I've done the basic circuit for the buttons. Just been googling hard for bluetooth HID implementation examples or at the very least some decent doc about it.

P.S: Your idea is cool. Congrats! :) Why don't you also develop a game that uses the exercise bike as input? a racing game? :)

I'm not using BT at all, it's wired from the circuitry to the gamepad, and the gamepad is of course wired.

ya i saw that in the pics. But asked just in case you (or anyone here) knew anything about Bluetooth HID.

Considered switching from YouTube to another embedded video player?

"This video contains content from sony music entertainment. it is no longer available in your country."

Awesome idea, but I don't have a bike =)

Actually, keep it on youtube, but replace your music with something that you can license for cheap. There are many available online. Keeping it on youtube will help with promoting your product.

I'm showing this video to a few friends in the game industry.

I will definitely consider that - I thought the worst that happened was the popup selling the song, which just seemed fair to me. Too bad sony can't figure out how to leverage their assets in some non-US countries as well.

Nice simple idea. It's mapped to trigger?

I think the cost is a bit too high for something that feels a bit gimmicky to your average dude though, esp once you add a margin for yourself (assuming that's your goal).

Would you need to buy all the controllers ahead of time? I think you may be able to just buy a dozen or so and then buy more as needed. They are a part you can buy basically anywhere so I dont think you would need to keep inventory of it.

Well, that's true. I was just trying to keep the post short.

Assuming you have $11500 you can spare, I'd do it. I think this is a pretty decent project and I personally would feel confident that 100 units could be moved.

I do, but its most of my savings :)

I think you should find someone to invest, then -- either as an equity investment, or something simpler like "I plan to sell these for $200 ea. Give me $x/unit now and I'll give you the $200-x 100 on the first 100 sold."

If you're willing to put in at least half, I think it'd be pretty easy to find someone who would match, as long as he got his money + some premium first. If the units don't sell, he'd just get the units.

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