Cycflix Makes You Burn Calories While You Watch a Binge
Forget Netflix and Chill, now there is Netflix and Sweat.
There was a period when I only watched Netflix movies on a treadmill or exercised on a stationary bike. I found that binge watching TV became a motivation in which I had to go to the gym five days a week, and my desire to get more than one episode meant that I was spending twice as much time on cardio than I otherwise would. Now, a Dublin Institute of Technology student has come up with something even better: a bike-connected TV that will only play the show you want to watch if you keep a certain speed.
It’s called Cycflix, and it’s more of a hack than an official product. Ronan Byrne, the genius behind this idea, hooked up an Arduino to his exercise bike to make the magic happen.
With it, you choose the duration of your workout, how long you are allowed to rest and what show you want to watch. As long as you trade at the set speed, the show will play. If you slow down, your show will pause until you pick up the pace.
Watch it in action in the video below:
Obviously, this is a pretty tricky thing to make sure you burn some calories and you could just post in front of the TV on your bike and make sure you keep trading on your own. However, this is definitely an interesting idea that can greatly improve your drinking session.
If you’d like to try it for yourself, Byrne has posted instructions on how to create an installation on GitHub, as well as fairly detailed step-by-step instructions on Instructables .