Internet-connected hamster wheel

Hamster wheel with hall sensors for rotation count/speed/direction. The wheel runs silent on a 608 ball bearing. The wheel is decorated with the names of our two hamsters (Pjotr and Ilya, they're Siberian dwarf hamsters), but there is a version of the wheel stl that has no names.

I'm working on a more elaborate write-up of the complete project here. This includes descriptions of the electronics and software.

In our home, an attached ESP8266 wifi-enabled microcontroller sends statistics that end up in an elastic search server (If you live in Europe, be sure to ask your hamsters for consent first).

For those interested in hamster fitness, this has taught me that:

• My hamsters can run at a top speed of 4.9 km/h and on average make 2.5 km/h;
• They almost exclusively use the wheel between 1 and 7 am;
• Combined, the two of them walk a distance of between 1.5 and 6 km each night.

The screen is housed in an adaptation of Octoprint 3D Printer Status Monitor - Wemos D1 Mini & SSD1306 by Stevetecx. The housing is adapted to be clamped between the bars of the cage.

The wheel itself was inspired by Run Mousey Run (Exercise Wheel), though designed from scratch.

The names were drawn in Inkscape and then converted through some variant of "Inkscape to Openscad converter".

Print instructions

• No supports
• 0.2mm

Pin assembly

To make the pin more rigid and to ensure that the wheel stays on, insert an M5 bolt (see picture). In the end I also used teflon ("plumbers") tape to make the bearing fit more snugly in the wheel.