Fitness Meets Flappy Bird

Have you ever seen a smoothie bike before? If not, they are stationary bicycles that have been converted to spin the blades of a blender as they are pedaled. It’s a cool concept, and they are fun to play with — at least for a while. But once the novelty wears off, few people really want to break a sweat to make a chunky smoothie when they know they can plug in a standard blender and get a better-blended drink in a few seconds.

Tony Goacher is a maker who was asked to repurpose some smoothie bikes by a local college. As it turns out, college students quickly tire of manual labor, and they aren’t too fond of cleaning up after themselves either. So rather than let these filthy smoothie bikes go unused, Goacher turned them into something college students will gladly make use of: video game controllers.

To make this happen, Goacher removed the blender’s blades and replaced them with a spinning disc that is half white and half black. On a 3D-printed enclosure that sits above this disc, Goacher installed an ESP32 development board. This board is wired to an optical sensor that faces the spinning disc. This sensor detects when the white section of the disc is visible, and that information is used to determine the speed at which the disc is spinning.

This speed is transmitted via a WebSockets connection to a Raspberry Pi. This computer is running a custom video game that uses the speed information to control the action. Goacher has developed a 1,500-meter dash game and a clone of Flappy Bird to keep the college students entertained. And they are entertained — the bikes are finally getting some use once again.