A few months ago I got a walking treadmill (this one) for under my desk and I generally like it a lot. It's helpful, especially during longer meetings when I know I'd have trouble focusing, to get my body moving, get my heart rate up, and keep my mind a little sharper.
But I've noticed is that it can feel a bit unnatural. Because we don't normally walk so monotonously. Whenever we're walking not on a treadmill things are constantly changing. It's much more dynamic. Our gait, our speed, the distance between steps, obstacles. They all change how we walk.
Now my treadmill has a little remote that I can use to change the speed, but when I'm focusing on something, I don't often think to do that.
But not long after I got my treadmill I noticed a little flashing Bluetooth symbol on its display panel. And I wondered, could I connect my Mac to this treadmill via Bluetooth? And if I can, can I control it over Bluetooth?
So I dove in with Claude Code, and sure enough, this totally works! It wrote some initial Python to do some exploration of what device ID to connect to and what messages to send once it's connected. And it turns out there is a standardized fitness protocol for Bluetooth fitness devices that Claude could reference and figure out pretty well.
Once we worked that out, we built a simple Go TUI using Bubbletea that lets me control the treadmill.
When it's running, I can choose from seven intensity levels, and then it will randomly change between three different speeds. I can control how often it rolls for a new speeds. And every once in a while it will just completely stop the treadmill as well.
This is a random little project, but I share it because I love that we live in an era where tools like this are A) possible and B) fast.
You can check out the project here.