Feb 3

3 min read

A walking experiment

If you know me, you’ll know I like a challenge now and then.
This time I tried something I’d never thought I’d do: Walking.

Since the Covid period I have a Hernia in my back. Partly that’s related to my job as a Software developer in combination with working from home 100% since Covid-times.

Standing Desk

Since I was diagnosed I bought a Standing desk. This works very well for myself. I like to stand 80% of my day, with like an hour of sitting down after lunch. I’m productive enough and very used to it. (ProTip: Buy great shoes, don’t do it barefoot!).

Levelling Things Up

Since a while I’ve been looking to level things up on this one. On a lot of my social media I got advertisements for “Walking Pads” from Xiaomi. But with a whopping price of € 800,00 it was not worth it (and they are not fast enough to run on!)

iBood.com is one of the website I daily check for deals. And they had a treadmill, it’s not that compact but at a price of € 299,99 it was at least affordable (and I could use it to run as well!). I took the measurements and compared them with the ground clearance on my standing desk and it just fitted under. Hooray!

The Cheapest one I could find! Tunturi T25

So it has been 22 days since I’ve got it. And it has been crazy.

I started of kinda slow, 2,7 km/h. Testing the waters, can I still be productive as a Software Engineer? It turned out I could take it up to 4–5 km/h easily. Still being able to think/type without being interfered. It goes very natural.

Stats

I walked already 100 kms on the treadmill!

If I’d leave from my house I’d have walked to Antwerpen for example.

Automated Tracking

A nerd as I am I also want to track my progress automatically. Here there is a combination of Smartplugs, HomeAssistant and some Google Sheets magic.

I setup 2 automations that trigger when:

Power is above 100w (start)
Power is for 1 minute below 100w (stop)

I use NodeRed to write them to Google Sheets:

I always add the speed myself, I couldn’t find a relation between the speed and the power just yet.

And with some formulas I calculate the total time + distance I’ve been walking.

Summary

I can already feel the health benefits of walking while working. It’s a power-up from my previous standing desk. It also allows me to maintain a better position and get into the “zone” quickly. I’m quite hooked already on that thing. Extra benefit: I don’t have to put the heating in my office to 21℃ anymore, 16 ℃ is enough, trust me!

Want more?

If you need some advice on integrations between any 2 systems. I can provide you professional advice and integrations (Mobile, Backend systems, Websites, databases,…). More information can be found on b-nys.com. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and or LinkedIn.

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Matthias!