A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava

	A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava(runnersworld.com)
	437 points by aanet 16 days ago \| 99 comments
	tl;dr: Dutch MRI physicist Thijs de Buck rigged his hamster Mollie's wheel with a magnet, hall sensor, and ESP32 microcontroller to log rotations, then wrote a script to convert the data into .FIT files and auto-upload them to a dedicated Strava account (Premium, since auto-uploads require it). Mollie averages nearly 10km per night, has amassed hundreds of followers, and completed Strava's August 400-minute challenge on Day 2.
	HN Discussion: ↑Sharing similar personal projects tracking pet exercise with microcontrollers and sensors •Providing additional context about the project details and Mollie's Strava profile •Noting that high rodent running distances are well-documented in scientific literature ~Suggesting the Strava Premium requirement could be bypassed with open-source tools ↑Seeing broader potential for products or reflecting on the novelty of pet fitness competition