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Handlebar Mounted Phone
Monday, July 20, 2009, by Sebastian Dwornik

The whole point of mobility is to be anywhere, and I write my software for people who take their mobile devices outside.

Exploration, adventure, and travel. These are the things I look forward to, and thus enjoy field testing my own software.

Straight from the appliedpda.com labs, comes the latest on-going experiment of having mounted an HTC Touch Diamond phone to the handlebars of my mountain bike.

It’s not pretty, but very effective.

Model Magic bucket

The secret comes in the form of a brilliant product called Model Magic. Originally designed for young children to express their creative talents through modeling with it. The material is safe, clean, cheap, and air-dries within 24 hours to a firm and rubbery substance that holds the shape it was molded in.

It makes for an excellent shock absorber as well as a perfect fit for any device you sculpt it for. You can even paint it any colour afterwards, but I just left it stock white for simplicity.

LocateMe Goes Rugged

Having a fancy touch screen device on your bike brings the feeling of owning one of those extravagant new luxury vehicles.

Using the LocateMe app, I was able to transmit my location to people at home regarding where I was on the trail. The speaker phone was also very clear and useful to call others. Best of all, the touch screen proved to be a really nice interface that worked well even with gloves on.

While I mostly used it to display GPS location data, in due time, other sensors can be attached to perform logging of environmental conditions, health monitoring, even the physical bike characteristics like g-force measurements of the shock absorbers.

In the future, a simple bike ride in the woods will return with more than just muddy pedals and flat tires. It will carry experiential data too.

Re: Handlebar Mounted Phone

Okay, did you mold the carrier to the 'touch' and the contour of the bike's headset and let it dry there? or was it enough to take an imprint of the bike's headset and let it cure indoors?

Cheers,
Andy

Andy
Friday, July 24, 2009

The bucket of Model Magic I bought contains four (4) individually packed portions. I only used one (1) pack.

I unwrapped the single packet, rolled and mashed it into a ball, and pressed it wholly against my handlebars. At the same time, molding it to fully wrap around the handlebar frame and T-sections near the joints where it splits at the front.

The end result encased the handlebar tubing for a complete grip.

Lastly, I then took my HTC Touch phone, positioned it and firmly pressed down with all of my might till the phone sunk completely into the top portion of the clay mold.

The mold expanded and took its shape, as I made slight adjustments to it by sculpting and shaping a few corners and such with my fingers.

I pulled the phone out of the mold, and left the bike indoors for the next 24 hours.

Afterwhich, it was usable.

Ideally though, since the volume of clay is quite large, I would recommend leaving it alone for 48-72 hours instead. By then, it is much firmer and ready for anything you can throw at it.

Hope this helps. :)

Sebastian Dwornik
Friday, July 24, 2009

Where did you get the strap?

A.J.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

I got the strap at a local Home Depot.

It's essentially a velcro cable tie.
(e.g. http://cableorganizer.com/panduit/tak-ty-cable-ties/)

Which I thought I needed, but it ended up that the model magic mold was so firm, gripping, and tight fitting around my phone that the cable tie wasn't even necessary.

Sebastian Dwornik
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

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