I recreated linus' and alex's "sweatiest desktop setup" from 2018

zied · April 23

in 2018 alex made a bicycle powered desktop, but it kept on crashing when they tried to use it because not enough power is being generated. I remembered this video a couple of months ago so it inspired me to recreate the idea (i was realllyyy bored).
Instead of generating power, I used an arduino, a hall effect and some magnets to calculate the speed of the wheel. The magnets are placed on the wheel so they activate the nearby halleffect when I pedal. The arduino calculates and sends the speed (ie how often a magnet went near the halleffect) to my python script running on my pc.
The scipt has a black overlay that covers all the screens and has hooks to the keyboard and mouse. If the speed is too low, the monitor visibility gets lower (black overlay gets less transparent) and the keyboard and mouse get blocked.
This achieves similar wanted results without the random crashes.
If you like it you can check it out here

OddOod · April 23

Welcome to the forums! And what a debut it is!
That's a fantastic little project! Congrats!

OhYou_ · April 23

you should instead tie it into monitor refresh rate so the slower you go the less hz it runs at. Maybe its doable idk

OddOod · April 24

On 4/23/2025 at 10:44 AM, OhYou_ said:

you should instead tie it into monitor refresh rate so the slower you go the less hz it runs at. Maybe its doable idk

Now that's just EVIL
Though I think that updating refresh rate messes with stuff...