Many people re-purpose Ikea furniture and components to other uses, my desk is one such project, using a couple of Ikea cabinets and a few other odds and ends to to comprise the drawers and supporting structure.  This project is no different but is a bit more involved as it was necessary to move a few of the “shelves” to make compartments wide enough to accommodate the electronics.

It all started with two 5×1 Xpedit bookshelves hauled back from the local Ikea store.

Everything was unboxed and I carefully measured out where I wanted the “shelves” on the top unit to end up so it made three compartments rather than the five  narrower compartments.

With the new dowel holes drilled, the bookshelf was assembled as normal.

And finally the two shelves (the bottom was left as is, simply did not install shelf #1 and #4) were screwed together from underneath to hide the screws.

A piece of 3/8″ MDF was cut to size and screwed on the back, this gives the units a bit of added stability.  The side facing inward was painted a shade of brown that matches the Expedit shelves.  1.5″ holes were drilled at the bottom center of each compartment.  Legs were fashioned out of three 2x4s cut to length to match the depth of the bookshelf and painted the same color as the MDF.  Finally, the felt bumpers Ikea supplied were stuck to the 2x4s so they would not scratch the floor when the unit is moved.

In closing, the unit is rock solid, heavy, and will hold almost anything available now or in the future.

I’m happy to see manufacturers getting behind the community to implement their products.  Not long ago, they would release something and go “oh no, our reference applications are copyrighted”.

A few years ago TI and a consortium of other companies and distributors came out with the Beagleboard, a full Linux computer in about the same size and shape of a small tablet, completely open source, hardware and software and it quickly became a huge success.  About a year ago, they came out with a smaller version, the Beaglebone, with less features (i.e. no sound, no HDMI (no video at all for that matter), only one USB, etc), in about the same form factor as a smartphone and/or slightly larger but very similar to the Arduino.  It even uses the same sort of shield scheme, called a “cape” in Beagle parlance.

Plugging it in and running it was no problem, the OS and many many utilities are already installed.  It appears as a linux machine on your network running SSH and a WWW server.  Also if you power it via USB, it appears as a drive on your Linux or Mac-OS machine automatically, some driver installation is needed on Windows.  I used the drive feature the first day to read the HTML5 presentation and get up to speed with it and never considered it again.

I’ve already got a few projects in mind for this.  My thermostat code is begining to burst the Arduino at the seams, especially since I added a LCD interface.  I want to add a nice graphic touch screen interface and this will definitely overwhelm the Arduino.  Also my bike computer was already slated to go on an Arduino Mega, but for about the same price, the Beaglebone is much more powerful.  And finally, I want to play with robotics a bit more, I’ve already ordered a couple of USB webcams to act as machine vision (and nanny cam when I travel).

In only a few short days I have managed to accomplish alot.  The next installation of this blog will be installing Ubuntu 12.10 on the Beaglebone and getting it ready for a Linux development environment.

It took me awhile to get used to things being in different places and different terminology but that was not a huge deal.  For example…

• The minimize, maximize and X buttons are on the other corner of a window.
• Each window does not have its own menu, instead, the menu appears in the bar at the top of the desktop when that particular window has focus.
• There is no task bar out of the box, but I found something nice in the form of Docky.  It can make a static taskbar like Win7 or a sort of round zoomy one like Mac.

I do miss some of my windows exclusive programs, like AutoCad LT2000, some games and I have an AOL account for quick networking tests (your browsing goes through AOL proxies, not your IP address).

All in all, it took me about a month to get used to things, now it’s second nature.  I have no problem alternating between Linux and Windows XP or 7.  I still run XP on the other computer right beside this one.

An added side benefit as this has set me up to do some serious development work on an embedded Linux microcontroller board, natively.  All the tools are already in the box.  I’ll be writing more on that very soon.

First things first, you will need to install Spotify.   You will find the full instructions here, but these are the basic steps.

# 1. Add this line to your list of repositories by
#    editing your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free

# 2. If you want to verify the downloaded packages,
#    you will need to add our public key
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 94558F59

# 3. Run apt-get update
sudo apt-get update

# 4. Install spotify!
sudo apt-get install spotify-client

That’s IT!  Pretty simple huh?

Now you will want to add a menu button on your MythTV install.  Those instructions are a bit more involved but here is a page describing adding HuluDesktop to MythTV.  Just replace references to huludesktop with spotify.

Simple huh?

So with that in mind, first we will need a display…. I am unsure which one exactly yet, but it must be graphical and LCD.  This line from Adafruit looks nice.  Also this old Nokia monochrome display looks nice, we don’t need color for this application.

Next we will need some sort of rotational sensor for the wheel, I have seen simple alarm contacts used, but I think I’ll go more elegant with a hall effect sensor and a magnet.

Next we need a platform, I am a fan and most familiar with the Arduino line, so we will use a classic Arduino (pro version 3.3V, no bells and whistles)  and build around that.  If we need more memory or power, we can always upgrade to the Arduino Mega.

And finally, for safety’s sake, we should add a flashy light on the back of the bike.  I had long wanted to do a Morse Code message in the flashing, to amuse those that can read it, and to provide an erratic flash to make it more attention grabbing.  So a few bright LEDs mounted under the seat will do the trick.

Oh, and we’ll need some form of rechargeable battery, Probably LiPo a charger and a battery gauge.

And there you have it, the initial design specifications for a bike computer.  Now its off to gather parts.