 We've identified a problem with pretty much every desk on the market. The traditional sitting desk has all kinds of ergonomic and posture challenges, and of course encourages a more sedentary lifestyle. And then there's the new age standing desk. Well, with the standing desk, you know, you stand. And there are a lot of claims being made about how these might help offset the... gigantic cake that you're apparently eating for lunch. And making matters worse, these standing desks are inordinately expensive in many cases. So we thought... leave it to us. We've got the solution. For less than a couple hundred bucks, we're gonna build the desk that forces you to stay in shape. Memory Express is dedicated to being the go-to shop for electronics in Canada, and with their uber price beat guarantee, there'll be any authorized Canadian retailer's price by 10% of the difference. Click the link below to learn more. So you want a desk that keeps you fit. Where do you start? Well, there are actually commercially available treadmill desks, but they are freaking expensive. So we set out to make something a bit more economical. Now, given that many, maybe even most people, should probably have a bike lying around, and if they don't, you can get one for pretty cheap on Craigslist, we figured that seemed like a good place to start. But how could we make sure that the user actually pedaled on it and didn't just sit on the bike seat, feeling like they were exercising? Could we maybe generate the power for the computer using the bike? Well, that seemed a bit harsh, but what if we took away their internet whenever they stopped pedaling? Now we're getting somewhere. So we set about creating a small generator from a bike that could be used to power the user's internet switch. After ordering a bike fitness trainer, an electric motor, and a charge controller from Amazon, we were ready to get started. Now you might think that we should put the electric motor directly onto the flywheel of the fitness trainer, but we need the motor to be spinning at around 3000 RPM. And we're not going to be hitting anywhere near that on the bike. So we need to create a gear reduction from the bike to about two and a half, two inches, something like that. So the plan was to use a V-belt attached to the tire and then onto one of these pulleys, which came in from Amazon, and the bore diameter is just totally wrong and will not fit onto here. So now we're just going to kind of raw dog it and see what happens. The flywheel was removed from the fitness trainer and the tire was removed from the rim, allowing the belt to sit directly on the rim. The tires needed to come off Alex's bike anyway after he ran over some beer bottles that someone kindly smashed on the road. So that worked out great for everyone. So the plan since our diecast pulleys aren't going to work are to laser cut out pieces of wood, have one that fits over this sprocket, then have a couple that go along the shaft here and sort of screw them all together and hopefully can transmit the torque. After a little bit of Chad, we were ready to fire the laser. Fire the laser! If we can just transmit the torque with this, it's going to be done tomorrow. It's going to be great. On a scale of one to absolutely horrendous, where would you rate this idea? Somewhere in the edge. You might just raise it up a little. Okay, I'll take that. Do you think that we've just got someone to sort of hold this? And then we pedaled, we could just see if it's going to work. With the wooden pulley attached and screwed together, we were actually we weren't that hopeful at this point. So that's got a bit of stickiness. I don't even think this is going to work with wood. All right, fits in the groove pretty well. Yeah, we'll just call friction part of the exercise experience. With very little to lose, we geared up to see if this plan could work at all. We would need to make sure that we could have the motor spinning at over 3000 RPM without the poor wooden pulley blowing to pieces. Ooh, let them go. So we're getting like 27 volts, something like that. That's what I think. Whoa! So clearly we need this to be mounted better than just me holding it. After proving that at least in theory this should work, we needed to make a more permanent mount for the motor. So we need to lift the motor up about this high so that the belt doesn't hit on the frame here. I'm kind of thinking that we might be best off making a frame. So we sort of put two here and then one across, and that's where the motor actually mounts. It would be nice though if there's some way for us to tighten it. Do you have any ideas? This is not how you're supposed to use these tools. Oh, that's kind of sketchy. No, that just came right out. Editors note that one didn't happen. You know, I just realized this is a dirty prototype. Why did I even bother drilling four holes? That's a problem. Yeah, we need to sandbag that for sure. The electric motor will be connected to this solar charge controller, which will take the constantly changing voltage out of the motor and output a nice clean 12 volts. From here, it will go to this 12 volt inverter, which will turn the 12 volts into 120 volt AC so that you could plug any device into it like a normal outlet. We weren't entirely sure if this would work since you might need a battery between the controller and inverter. On. There. I wonder if this will work. Oh, not my pulley. Actually, it kind of looks like that I just forgot to put the nut on. So if I start pedaling and you press the button that's on that, nothing. Yeah, we must need a battery in there. Fitness PC. We grabbed dead because he was over here taking candy. The candy that's upstairs. For it to actually work, we need this battery here between the solar charger and the inverter. And that basically just allows the solar charger to actually turn on. And then it does its thing. So I'd start pedaling. So when this lights blinking slowly, that means that we're actually getting charge into the battery. And that means that it's around 24 ish volts or so. Now, what we need to do is have it so that if it stops pedaling, this light turns off because right now it's just staying on until the battery drains, which is way too long. And it's not nearly as what you call a draconian as we want. Because the idea is to punish the user whenever they stop exercising, we needed to add a relay. Where the f*** did I put that relay? That closes a switch when the user starts pedaling, completing a circuit and sending power from the battery to the inverter, then immediately opens it, disconnecting the circuit once the user stops pedaling. With the relay added into the circuit, well, it was time to see if it works. Yes! Ha ha! And then if I stop... Yes! Ha ha! I don't want to call it a success, but is it definitely a prototype that works? I learned so much about electronics today. With V1 working, all that was left was to clean things up a bit. So I kind of want to just laser cut a piece of wood that'll go sort of around here, out for some sandbags, and have perfect mounts for the motor. And then on Monday, we'll have the thrust bearing arrive for this. And we're basically done. Just clean up the electronics a bit, put it in like a nice box or something. Do we have to make a nice box? Oh, it better be the best box. The best box? I can't make good boxes, though. We could laser cut a box. And you basically know how this works now. CAD, laser, and boom! We're good to go. Except wood is a pain. I think it's fine. And different pieces can have slightly different properties, so a bit of TLC was needed here and there. It's still looking pretty good. It's a four-foot job. You can get pretty close. Like that works. Not bad. With the top piece cut, we attached some 2x4s on the bottom for support, and Ed filled in the letters using permanent marker. Since we couldn't just leave the electronics lying on the floor, we decided to stash them in a Dan case using double-sided tape. And after a little bit of love, everything actually fit in surprisingly well. Any holes were closed using acrylic. Damn it! Ha-ha! Wow, that actually cut me. Are you bleeding? Like slightly, yeah. All right, time for first aid. And in the end, it's not looking half bad if we do say so ourselves. So now that the Fitness PC 2000 is ready to be set up at an actual desk, well, maybe it's time for us to show it to me. So this is the Fitness PC 2000. Is that just Sharpie marker? Wow, that actually looks surprisingly good. Like good for what we would normally do. Yeah. Okay, sandbag goes here. So basically what? We've just got a motor here with... Did you make this out of wood? Why? Well, we ordered the ones, but they came in the wrong size, so they didn't fit on the shaft. You give a man a laser cutter and laser cut anything. This outputs like 24 volts. 200 watts, you mean? Yeah, 200 watts of AC power. AC power, okay. So 200 watts is our maximum output here. You guys probably realize then that if you have a powerful rig, that's not enough for you to actually power up your gaming machine while you game. But any more than that would be quite difficult for most people to do just by pedaling anyway. So should we evaluate now just how usable this is? I guess so, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, here, what should I try to do? Just, you know, browse the forum, watch some YouTube videos. I got to say it is a little bit harder to type while I'm, you know, going ham on the exercise bicycle, but it's not as bad as you might think. Oh, look at this, a mouth-operated mouse. It's like all these crit- what are these nice tech chips guys doing? One thing that is a little bit tough is you can actually feel the resistance changing sometimes. Like it'll almost like it'll let you know when you need to give her a little bit more. Do we know why exactly that is? Does it have to do with the battery charging or? It's how much load is being pulled by the converter, so when you have the power being drawn, it'll create a bit more resistance. So what could I do that would make it draw more power? Should we try to power the whole thing with it? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, so here we go, powering up the computer. Wow, so you get like a real physical feedback for the amount of power that your components are drawing, like during boot up. Oh, like it initialized something there, I felt it. Oh, that is some good resistance we got going here. I'm gonna work up a sweat pretty quick here. Let's get this demo going. You know, that's actually not that bad. And it's a constant load now, whereas like these spikes in CPU activity before, I could really feel them. You would get absolutely... No, I fell behind. Oh, crap. Okay, that relay is really unforgiving. The second generation of this product definitely needs like a Phillips Hue that gives you like a reading on your battery or like a capacitor, right? So if you had a big fat capacitor and then it was like green when it's full and then would slowly go to yellow and red, that would be cool. You'd probably want to get one of those stupid mice from Thermaltake that has the fan in it. They have a keyboard with one too. Keep your palms from getting too sweaty and your arms from getting too heavy. This might be a little extreme. I think having it plugged into the network switch is good enough. Okay, should we try and play a game? Come on. Okay, play CSGO. No, no, no, no. Just load the map. Come on. I just want to play one round. Okay, CT, here we go. So CPU is at like 25% and GPU is going up as high as like 80, 100. Oh, almost fell behind for a second there. No! I give up. The new Volta XL charging cable delivers great value, durability and some enhancements over the original. It's capable of delivering up to 87 watts at 4.3 amps, allowing it to be compatible with fast charging devices. With on-the-go charging functionality, it'll allow your phone to act as a battery bank to help you charge up other gadgets. And the snag safe tips are made from an N52 neodymium magnet that offers a strong solid connection, which enables you to quickly connect your devices, but also acts as a safety in case you get your cables caught on anything. They're made of strong military grade nylon and they come with a lifetime guarantee on the cable. So check out their Indiegogo page at the link in the video description. Oh, oh my legs. So if the goal was an exercise bike that makes you literally get ass wet, the mission fucking accomplished, the fitness PC is a huge success. So thanks again for watching guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, and maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, but not pre soaked in sweat, and our community forum, which you should totally join. I am like actually dripping all over the place right now.