Background
This weekend I set out to connect to my new Echelon Connect stationary exercise bike with an ESP8266 or ESP32 and display the stats on a small OLED. This turned out to be surprisingly easy thanks to the open source nature of things these days. Huge thanks to snowzach’s github where I found the details of how to connect to the bike using a ESP32 board that I didn’t have. But I did and do have a set of ESP32 Devkit V1 boards and a few SSD1306 Oled screens that would do the trick. Below are the details of what I did and the files that are related to it. Hope you enjoy!
Requirements
Main Components
- ESP32 Devkit V1
- SSD1306 Oled
- 3D Printed Case (Basic one I made)
- Arduino Firmware
Secondary Components
- Soldering Iron
- Hot Glue Gun (If using my basic case)
- Micro USB Cable (for power)
- Spare Wire
Setup
Schematic
Below you can see how the ESP32 Should be wired to the Oled screen.
To flash the firmware plug the ESP32 board into your computer and load the provided Arduino Firmware from my Github page in the Arduino editor. You will need to hold the button on the board labeled ‘en’ when the Arduino terminal shows it is trying to connect to the board.
Case
The case is all slip fitting, and to keep it shut put a dab of hot glue in a couple of corners before closing (be sure to flash the firmware before hand as the case will not allow for pressing of the chip enable button). The ESP32 Chip slips into the bottom square which holds it in place. On the top part it is important that the ‘lip’ of the opening is on the pin side of the SSD1306.
Conclusion and Results
This was a really simple setup and went way smoother with the help of SnowZachs research and code. I would like to remind all readers — this is the most basic setup possible to get the data from the bike, and the UI (at the time of this post) can be seen below.
‘Pow’ == Power
‘Res’ == Resistance
‘Cad’ == Cadence
