[chrismorgan]

I had vague ideas, a few years ago, of integrating a keyboard into the handlebar of a recumbent tricycle (it would need to not interfere with braking, but there’s a fair bit of leeway left for useful design). Modelling clay had indeed not occurred to me! Nor had I realised how chorded keyboards could hook directly to GPIO pins. If I’d seen this back then, I probably would have gone ahead and prototyped something right away. Alas for this vision (though not alas in general!), I got married instead and my long-distance cycling days are behind me. But I’m still rather tempted to play with this, it looks fun and surprisingly straightforward, even if I can’t immediately see a good practical purpose in my life. Just last week I happened to see a box of epoxy modelling clay and wondered what it would be like to use… though I suspect it might harden too quickly for this.

[jpm_sd]

Steve Roberts beat you to it, back in the 80s.

https://bikepacking.com/plog/steve-roberts-computing-across-...

More details, from the man himself:

https://microship.com/winnebiko-ii/

https://microship.com/bicycle-mobile-packeteering/

https://microship.com/first-text-while-driving/

https://microship.com/behemoth/

I think the craziest thing is that almost every feature he built into BEHEMOTH is now covered by the average smartphone (+ a small solar panel).

[buttetsu]

I had never heard of Steve Roberts or these amazing bike projects. Reading up through the development of BEHEMOTH put an huge smile on my face, thank you. Such passion!

[EvanAnderson]

If you want to see BEHEMOTH it used to be at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I'd assume it's still there.

Edit: Yeah! Here's the stuff: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mobile-computing/...

[FullyFunctional]

Yes, but this is way beyond that IMO. Really lovely project that I of course must build