I just got a new proform treadmill and found it has an Ethernet (RJ45) connector on the back of the display panel. I was not too surprised, since I knew it had ifit.com connectivity. When I set this tread mill up, I WAS surprised to find out that ifit communicates to the treadmill though the sound card and an audio cable and not how i had expected.

For those that have not heard of ifit.com – it is a neat subscription based web site that will develop work out schedules. It appears to have a db of hundreds of exercise machine programs. Some of these programs are modeled after real hikes and flip though a slide show of pictures from that location. As the media player plugin plays the slides, it periodically chips a couple tones to adjusted the speed and inclination. I am not sure I find it valuable enough to continue beyond the 30 day trail, but I was impressed with how challenging it can be.

So my question is this: Has anyone seen a use for or a program to interface to the Ethernet connection on exercise equipment? If I was better with sniffer or something like that I would check to see what all the traffic is coming off the device. Just curious.

Are you sure it's ethernet? There's something called CSAFE which is a standardised interface to gym machines which also uses a RJ-45 connection but is actually RS-232 and power. Some of the bikes and steppers in my gym have them.

- Trevor

Yeah just because it's RJ45 doesn't mean it's ethernet. The products we make here (energy meters) now have RJ45 RS232 and RS485 ports. Means we can use standard RJ45 cables for joing RS485 multidrop connections. We just have special RJ45 to DB9 cables for RS232 if we need it.

Yeah just because it's RJ45 doesn't mean it's ethernet.

Yup, never just assume that an RJ45 plug is ethernet. In fact, doesn't the RJ45 plug itself predate 10baseT ethernet pretty significantly?