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Decoding the Peloton

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Re: Decoding the Peloton

#31

Post by 0x1F8B »

chrisseaton wrote: post #17
hombre_fatal wrote: post #6

I was floored when I realized the Peloton has no games and it's closed to third-party developers. It seems to just have group classes which couldn't be less interesting to me. I'd ask "what were they thinking?" but it apparently sells like hotcakes, so it's me who's out of touch.

> I was floored when I realized the Peloton has no games and it's closed to third-party developers. It seems to just have group classes which couldn't be less interesting to me. I don't understand what you thought the product was? It's an exercise bike. You do exercise classes on it. It's not a games machine. What were they thinking? They were thinking it's an exercise bike.

This is a grouchy reply. The OP obviously isn't trying to get Tekken running on a Peloton.

You can imagine "games" in this sense being competitions played out via the bike, so time trials, race tournaments, etc. Compete with your friends (or others) to get through a race comparable to Tour de France stages -- something like that. Aside from survival, there is no greater motivator for pushing oneself physically than competition. Games facilitate that.

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#32

Post by boringg »

matsemann wrote: post #19
rkangel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess that it's actually a classic razorblades model - the real product is the classes and the bike is just a way to be able to do the classes from home. It's probably not surprising that a group of tech people tends more towards introversion and exercising alone, whereas the general population likes the group aspect for motivation.

It's not about introversion, it's the format of the workouts. There are so much more that could have been done with the hardware, instead of limiting to this small use case. For instance I bike with my club on Zwift using Discord in a group setting. I participate in Zwift races against others. All social stuff, just different.

Apparently there is a indiegogo or other crowdsourcing company that is making a conversion of peloton to allow people to use zwift by putting some hardware on top. Not ideal but gives the bike more function. Will be interested to seee if it’s any good. Clearly not as good as my wahoo kikr

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#33

Post by FpUser »

While I applaud this fine hacker job I am curious about practicality of this.

If the goal is to use to use the bike part with the other applications would not it be simpler for user to simply buy any pedal / crank based power-meter. Going this way one can also choose way less expensive spin bikes.

If the goal is to share Peloton Bike with the person who actually uses it as originally intended then power meter I think is still valid and less intrusive approach.

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#34

Post by FpUser »

rkangel wrote: post #15
cerebellum42 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the prices are crazy. Quick comparison: Peloton bike EUR 2145 + EUR 39/month - gets you courses and indoor riding or: Canyon Endurace AL Disc 6.0 as an example of a very solid entry level road bike - EUR 1299 Kickr Core direct drive turbo trainer (good turbo trainer, there are cheaper ones if you go without direct drive) - EUR 799 Combined EUR 2098 + EUR 15/month for a Zwift membership or something comparable…

I really struggle to justify EUR 1300 as 'entry level'. It might be entry level for being competitive, but if you just want exercise on something decent you can get road bikes for half of that. I have bought (good) cars for less than EUR 1300.

Very practical solution would be to take the old beater bike and mount it on direct drive or wheel based trainer permanently. Old used bike can be had for close to nothing

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#35

Post by kcmastrpc »

FpUser wrote: post #33

While I applaud this fine hacker job I am curious about practicality of this. If the goal is to use to use the bike part with the other applications would not it be simpler for user to simply buy any pedal / crank based power-meter. Going this way one can also choose way less expensive spin bikes. If the goal is to share Peloton Bike with the person who actually uses it as originally intended then power meter I think…

Back in October another hacker and myself spent some time figuring all this stuff out as well and made a more practical application of the results here: https://github.com/ptx2/gymnasticon/pull/12

You can already use a rPI and a RS232 USB device to pull metrics off the bike and transmit those signals via BT.

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#36

Post by kcmastrpc »

pkulak wrote: post #5

Wonderful! I've got one of these things and love it, but hate the classes and never do anything but Just Ride while I watch the news. Seems silly to be paying $40 a month, so at some point I want to find a way to get my stats without a connection to a Peloton server.

https://github.com/ptx2/gymnasticon/pull/12

I've already done this.

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#37

Post by kcmastrpc »

stefan_ wrote: post #28
pkulak wrote: post #5

Wonderful! I've got one of these things and love it, but hate the classes and never do anything but Just Ride while I watch the news. Seems silly to be paying $40 a month, so at some point I want to find a way to get my stats without a connection to a Peloton server.

You'll be disappointed because despite the outrageous price for that hunk of metal, they've totally skimped on the power accuracy part of it.

The new version of the bike is much more accurate according to reviews. However, the signal is now transmitted over USB-C, and probably not nearly as hackable.

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#38

Post by kcmastrpc »

Nice work. In September / October of last year I was inspired by someone else doing this and showing off they could Zwift with their PTON bike.

After some digging around, and figuring out how they encoded the data it was trivial to implement this in a project that was used to keep Flywheel Bikes working.

https://github.com/ptx2/gymnasticon

The changes I introduced which now include support for the Peloton can be found here: https://github.com/ptx2/gymnasticon/pull/12

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#39

Post by justjash »

cosmodisk wrote: post #29
hedberg10 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ridicule fads, but I think it's interesting. I know people will pay a reasonable price for a product they might not even need, but an unreasonable price? How the hell does that happen?

The demographics for these kind of products is very different. It's either those who do have enough money not to care about the cost or the so called aspiring ones: who don't have money but want to fit in or relate to the better off groups. It reminds me when the latest Iphone came out( the most expensive version). Guess who bought it? Our CEO and a member of my team,who was probably on the lowest salary in the compa…

This is generally what I notice also. Seems to be less about riding the actual bike and more about telling people you have a Peleton.

Re: Decoding the Peloton

#40

Post by bluntfang »

chrisseaton wrote: post #17
hombre_fatal wrote: post #6

I was floored when I realized the Peloton has no games and it's closed to third-party developers. It seems to just have group classes which couldn't be less interesting to me. I'd ask "what were they thinking?" but it apparently sells like hotcakes, so it's me who's out of touch.

> I was floored when I realized the Peloton has no games and it's closed to third-party developers. It seems to just have group classes which couldn't be less interesting to me. I don't understand what you thought the product was? It's an exercise bike. You do exercise classes on it. It's not a games machine. What were they thinking? They were thinking it's an exercise bike.

peloton has games built in. you get ranked based on your performance for each group class. you can compare yourself to previous classes. you can view your exercise history. etc
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