Raul Muñoz wanted smart-treadmill data from a rented machine that he could not open, modify, or attach sensors to. His solution leaves the treadmill untouched: a USB camera watches it from the side while an AI model on an Arduino VENTUNO Q estimates walking speed from video and broadcasts the result over Bluetooth FTMS to compatible fitness apps.

To train the system, Muñoz recorded treadmill sessions while labeling the displayed speeds, building a dataset across ten sessions. A restriction that ruled out a simple physical sensor therefore led to an entire local computer-vision pipeline sitting beside the machine.