Hacking a Stationary Bike Into the Ultimate Workout Game Controller
YouTuber Insert Controller Here modified an exercise bike with an Arduino and an Xbox controller to play Grand Theft Auto 5.
Video games and exercise don’t normally go together. However, using a stationary bike to control an on-screen bike would perhaps be the ideal way to merge the two, and — as it just so happens — you can ride a bicycle in Grand Theft Auto 5. With this idea in mind, YouTuber “Insert Controller Here” got to work creating a specially modified Xbox controller that allows for directional control as usual, with the speed of the bike regulated by your actual pedaling.
Motion is detected by a magnet attached to the stationary bike’s wheel, with two detector switches fixed in place on the frame. An “Arduino” Pro Micro board picks up these pulses, and sends the appropriate signals to the pad modded controller to ride at a normal pace, or virtually taps the “A” button repeatedly to sprint. There’s also reverse functionality demonstrated by another sensor, though, this appears to not be fully implemented in the bike rig itself. Final code for this would reportedly be more complicated, likely involving a bit of quadrature encoding.
The build looks like quite a usable hack as-is, and something that could be modded for use with any number of other games. The project is outlined in the video, with a demo, that includes rather ridiculous bike vs. police car gun battle, starting at around 4:30.
