Use the Rower as a Smart Home Device

[laberning]

By implementing MQTT, we could make Open Rowing Monitor an IoT device which you then can embed i.e. in a home automation setup.

This idea actually came to life by accident through a typo in this issue #39 😄
Not sure yet how useful this might be , but it would give Open Rowing Monitor quite a unique feature in the world of rowers 😄

Some use cases could be (all of them not to take to seriously)

1. Drill Sergeant: If you didn't row for X days, then the TV will not get any power.
2. Mood: Change the lighting situation related to the workout.
3. Turn on a fan when you start rowing.
4. Trigger a vacuum cleaner robot when you start rowing (it's noisy anyway, so might as well use the time for some house maintenance).

Publishing some metrics via MQTT shouldn't be very difficult since there is a good library that should integrate well (https://github.com/mqttjs/MQTT.js).

Feel free if you have some ideas of things where this might be useful. If we find some good use cases then maybe we will implement this...

[JaapvanEkris]

Exposing some webinterface-elements would be interesting, some for setting goals and reading data. Perhaps providing a hook to scripts for certain events (like starting to row, finishing a row) with some basic information would be interesting as well (partly to turn on the TV :), but also to trigger postprocessing of files, etc.). Most smarthome applications respond well to some data sent to them through http-reqests of triggered shell-scripts.

For example, I have a bash-script running after the row completes (is signalled by the presence of files being produced) that postprocesses them (for example the preliminary VO2Max calculation is done that way, as well as a calcuation of the average drag and thus damper setting, which are injected into the notes field of the .tcx) and upload them to a site (Garmin and RowsAndAll in my case).

Having some hooks to bash-scripts and allowing a service to poll status through JSON would actually allow a lot of scenario's.

[JaapvanEkris]

"If you didn't row for X days, then the TV will not get any power."

You realise there are easier ways to do this? Look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhejwuDLr24

Perhaps some idea for your getting your kids to row :)

[nathan-stewart]

My rower doesn't generate enough power to run the TV. I like the smart outlet approach. My brother did that with semi-independent adult offspring.