Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

runnersworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 106 posts

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#61

Post by wiredfool »

berkes wrote: post #37
otherme123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most often at 5 am, for whatever reason. Cats are crepuscular animals. They are "programed" do start at 5 AM, hunt, and go back to sleep until afternoon. Living in homes tweaked them a little, but the 5 AM thing is still strong in a lot of them (mine included). https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/cat-keeping-you...

> crepuscular So not specifically at 5AM, but around twilight. In my area, and for my cats, that changes a lot between summer and winter. Same for my chickens, which is why "automatic chicken doors" are difficult/impossible around here: It'd need to calculate sunset and sundown, and then also consider clouds and trees: in winter the sun sets around 16:30, but the low angle makes sunlight more blocked by clouds, parti…

When I did it, I closed the door at nautical twilight. The key is that you need to close the door after the chickens roost but before the nocturnal predators come out.

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#62

Post by alternatex »

mkagenius wrote: post #22
etrautmann wrote: post #4

If you look at any neuroscience paper, mice will run 10k a day or more on a wheel overnight. I thought the axis labels were wrong when I first saw that type of study. It’s quite common.

10k steps is a lot for me too.

It's 10km, which is a lot more than 10k steps.

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#63

Post by jagged-chisel »

lefra wrote: post #52
berkes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> crepuscular So not specifically at 5AM, but around twilight. In my area, and for my cats, that changes a lot between summer and winter. Same for my chickens, which is why "automatic chicken doors" are difficult/impossible around here: It'd need to calculate sunset and sundown, and then also consider clouds and trees: in winter the sun sets around 16:30, but the low angle makes sunlight more blocked by clouds, parti…

Sounds like something that could be solved by an ambient light sensor.

Are you crazy? Just get an LLM into the decision loop and you can obviate the need to iterate and test with a lazy human brain and instead waste a fabulous amount of energy, all while setting your project up to get some fat VC …

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#64

Post by jagged-chisel »

schaefer wrote: post #50
hi_hi wrote: post #42

Also built a bike computer for my daughter using an esp32, reed switch and magnet. As we had recently watched Back To The Future, when she reached 8.8 mph it would play a brief snippet of appropriate music!

That’s amazing, nice work Dad. Do you also play the approach music when her power output reaches 1.21 Gigawatts?

Should probably scale it appropriately like the speed

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#65

Post by mauvehaus »

alternatex wrote: post #62
mkagenius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10k steps is a lot for me too.

It's 10km, which is a lot more than 10k steps.

Not by much. A mile is 1000 paces, or 2000 steps [0]. 10000 steps is 5 miles, 10km is 6.2 miles.

Walking on flat, paved surfaces, I do about 1850 steps per mile of distance[1]. I have a pretty long inseam, so I'm not surprised that I'd be under 1000 paces. Given that roads weren't paved with concrete or asphalt until relatively recently, I'm not surprised that the Roman mile is a little shorter than our current one[2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Name

[1] Garmin watch

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Roman

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#66

Post by chongli »

berkes wrote: post #37
otherme123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most often at 5 am, for whatever reason. Cats are crepuscular animals. They are "programed" do start at 5 AM, hunt, and go back to sleep until afternoon. Living in homes tweaked them a little, but the 5 AM thing is still strong in a lot of them (mine included). https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/cat-keeping-you...

> crepuscular So not specifically at 5AM, but around twilight. In my area, and for my cats, that changes a lot between summer and winter. Same for my chickens, which is why "automatic chicken doors" are difficult/impossible around here: It'd need to calculate sunset and sundown, and then also consider clouds and trees: in winter the sun sets around 16:30, but the low angle makes sunlight more blocked by clouds, parti…

The automation features in Apple Home can be set to do things at sunrise or sunset. These track down to the minute the sunrise/sunset times from the weather app data for your location.

Your best bet, if you really want an automatic chicken door, is to get a dumb one that just opens when powered on and closes (via springs) when powered off, then plug it into a smart outlet automated to turn on at sunrise and off at sunset.

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#67

Post by JCharante »

mauvehaus wrote: post #65
alternatex wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 10km, which is a lot more than 10k steps.

Not by much. A mile is 1000 paces, or 2000 steps [0]. 10000 steps is 5 miles, 10km is 6.2 miles. Walking on flat, paved surfaces, I do about 1850 steps per mile of distance[1]. I have a pretty long inseam, so I'm not surprised that I'd be under 1000 paces. Given that roads weren't paved with concrete or asphalt until relatively recently, I'm not surprised that the Roman mile is a little shorter than our current one[2…

most mice require more steps per mile of distance

Re: A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

#68

Post by brightbeige »

Reminds me of Nobel and Ignobel prize winner Andrei Geim, who authorer a paper with his hamster, H.A.M.S. ter Tisha. As I remember, he added Mr/Ms Tisha to be able to write “we” instead of “I”.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09214...

Post reply on HN