Allen Pan Transforms a Broken Treadmill Into a Game Controller

Here at the end of January, some of you have likely made an exercise resolution of some sort. According to the Strava “social fitness network,” many of that group have also begun to fall back into their old habits. Like playing video games.

Allen Pan, for his part, enjoys — or at least has spent nearly 60 hours on — a game called Death Stranding. According to Pan, this game could be described as a post-apocalyptic version of Paperboy meets Amazon Prime, but on foot.

After obtaining a broken treadmill, Pan reveals that while it takes a lot of effort, you can still move the belt by walking. Conveniently, there’s a magnetic sensor assembly that lets the treadmill see how far you’ve gone. His first idea was to use an Arduino, which would translate this distance into PS4 controller inputs via a digital potentiometer. For reasons that are perhaps best explained in the video, that didn’t quite work out.

This didn’t deter Pan, however, and with the help of aerial hacker Peter Sripol, he came up with the idea to connect two 24V relays to the treadmill’s motor. As it’s now human-powered, this motor acts as a generator, which turns the relays on at different voltages set by a potentiometer. These are hooked up as inputs to a knockoff DualShock 4.

Although Pan still has to use the right analog stick to maneuver the camera, all of the left stick's functionality has been transferred to the treadmill. This enables him to sync his movements in real life to main character Sam Porter Bridges' in-game speed. Pan even wore a backpack strapped to the treadmill for the total experience.

When all is said and done, Pan (and friends) have an entertaining way to game and get in shape at the same time!