If you have a desk that allows you to work both standing and sitting, you will know that it is useless if you do not force yourself to change your position from time to time. Of course, doing it is not easy until you manage to introduce that new habit into your day to day, but if you have a Raspberry Pi you will be able to achieve it in a possibly easier way thanks to the automatic height change that you can program
Control your standing desk with a Raspberry Pi
Working for many hours in the same position is not something that experts in ergonomics and postural hygiene recommend. And yet, most of us end up falling into this and not only spend many hours sitting, but also in a position that is not the most correct for our back, shoulders, neck, etc.
Hence, in recent years the use of height adjustable desks o standing desk has become so popular. Firstly, because prices have dropped a lot and secondly, because you can find solutions of all kinds capable of adapting to the needs of each one. So it's already a little easier to change positions from time to time.
The only problem is that now you have to have, like everything that involves a change in habits, willpower to take advantage of these advantages. And of course, that according to each one is easier or more complicated to achieve. If you are in the group of people who have a hard time remembering what could or should change posture from time to time while working, this surely interests you.
Thanks to the use of a Raspberry Pi, you can program the automatic change of position or rather the height of your desk to work standing or sitting. The only thing you will have to do is a bit of technological DIY as this user did and define what time you will do it in one position or another.
Thus, for example, you could establish a time in the morning sitting and another standing or make a change from time to time. Here you decide, David Kong decided to use intervals of between 45 and 60 minutes to change positions recurrently and he automated all of that thanks to the use of A Raspberry Pi But W.
To achieve this, I connected the control of his table to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi Zero W. Having programmable buttons, he only had to set the heights, memorize them and then see what was the correct combination to activate the push after soldering them and run a script Python on the Raspberry.
Logically this is not something applicable to each and every one of the months of this type, it would be necessary to look at the particular case of each one, but if you have a minimum of an idea of electronics, it may be easy for you to transfer the idea to your own situation .
Alexa, let's work standing up
Interesting to use a Raspberry Pi to change the height of a standing desk? Well now, one more step with the integration of Alexa. Although here you are going to need somewhat more advanced knowledge to achieve it.
Here Robin Reiter managed to hack an Ikea sit-stand desk so he could control it via voice commands from Alexto. A somewhat more complex task, due to the desktop itself and because executing a script is not the same as having to implement a voice command.
However, the result is frankly striking and it is likely that if you are daring, have an IKEA desk or similar, you will be encouraged to do something similar to these two ways of modifying the use of this type of solution to work both at home and in the office. office.
Of course, you could always avoid complications and look for one of the standing desks that already offer voice control and could be automated through the use of routines. It is true that there are not many, but options like the Vert Desk v3 could be a good option. Although there are many others and very good desks for standing and sitting.