How-To: Runner’s Odometer

Arduino Technology
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Jason Gessner’s wife is an avid runner and they’ve often joked that she puts in more miles than he does in his car. This inspired Jason to create an odometer to track the miles his wife logs during training and races. Jason used a numerical readout he found at a surplus store and hooked it up to a Motor Shield. A computer with Ruby checks the DailyMile API every minute for new entries and sends a signal to the Arduino over serial to increment the counter with a satisfying click for each mile his wife has logged. This is only his first prototype of the project; Jason plans on making a nice enclosure for it and is considering making the odometer wireless. As a runner myself, I love this idea and would love to work on my own version. Luckily for me, Jason has posted his code here. Nice work, Jason!

2 thoughts on “How-To: Runner’s Odometer

  1. jason gessner says:

    Thanks for the post, matt! I’ll be posting updates on the larger build on the milwaukee makerspace blog, so i’ll keep you updated on the progress.

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Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.

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