Two years ago, I decided to pick up a Water Rower. After using it semi-regularly, I decided the thing I needed was some sort of gamification mechanism (as well as a better way of tracking stats, since the S3/S4 monitor that comes with rowing machines is literally one of the least intuitive pieces of consumer technology.
So, I purchased the Ergatta upgrade kit–it had a bunch of things I really liked–such as integration with my existing rowing machine, a much easier way to track stats, plus a pretty screen. I do love it, but sometimes I find myself lacking motivation or some sort of weird FOMO because I can’t catch up on my TV shows.
What if you could side load some apps (like Netflix, Hulu, or the like) and distract yourself from the workout experience altogether?
Turns out–you can. It does require a bit of legwork, though. Here we go!
Prerequisites
To get started, you’ll want to verify that your device is compatible. To do this, turn on your Ergatta and wait for the Select a profile screen to load. Then, tap in the upper-left hand corner of the screen (above and to the left of the Select a profile text) to expose the Android desktop. If this works, then you’re good to go. For reference, my Ergatta build is v1.30.5.
If accessing the Ergatta tablet desktop worked for you, then you’ll just need a few more quick things:
- An SD card (or microSD inside an SD card adapter) or a USB drive, formatted with the FAT32 filesystem
- An SD card reader or USB port on a computer
That’s about it. Let’s get going!
Prep work
Since the Ergatta platform runs on Android, you may be thinking to yourself, “why don’t I just install the Google Play Store?” Many have tried, but it has too many dependencies to get working correctly. Fortunately, there’s another app store that has most of the stuff you want. 🙂
- Navigate to https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get/amazonapp and download the Amazon Appstore App for Android.
- On the next page, click Click here to download the Android app.
- Click OK to confirm that you understand you’re downloading a file for an Android device and that it may not be compatible with your computer.
- Wait for the file Amazon_App.apk to download.
- Transfer the file to your storage media (either USB or SD card).
Next, we’ll start working on the rower itself.
Configuring the Ergatta tablet
This section will be divided into several parts:
- Installing the Amazon Appstore
- Configuring a navigation bar
- Configuring screen rotation settings
- Installing additional apps
Let’s go!
Installing the Amazon Appstore
Installing the Amazon Appstore is the first thing you should do.
- If your device is not already turned on, boot it to the Select a profile screen.
- Tap the upper-left hand corner of the screen 7 times to drop to the Android desktop.
- Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to expose the App Drawer.
- Take your storage media and plug it into the tablet. In this case, I’m using the SD card slot.
- Launch the File Browser app.
- Select the SD card from the left-hand navigation pane.
- Select the Amazon Appstore APK file (Amazon_App.apk).
- Tap the ellipsis icon (next to the Trash can) on the upper-right hand corner of the window and then select Open with.
- Select Package installer.
- Click Continue to acknowledge the warning.
- Sign into the Amazon app.
Yes, I know it’s sideways. We’re going to take care of that later.
If you’ve tinkered around with the Ergatta tablet’s Android interface for any amount of time, you’ve probably discovered that you can’t really navigate very well and have to spend a lot of time rebooting to launch new things.
To fix this annoyance, we’re going to install a navigation bar to help switch tasks and apps on the device.
- If your device is not already turned on, boot it to the Select a profile screen.
- Tap the upper-left hand corner of the screen 7 times to drop to the Android desktop.
- Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to expose the App Drawer.
- Launch the Amazon Appstore.
- Tap in the search box and type
navigation bar
and then tap the green checkbox to search. - Select Get under the Navigation bar app by Wormhole Space. (there are two–a green one and a blue one). For this set of instructions, we’re going to use the green app. You can find the app here as well.
- Click Download.
- After it has been installed (it should install automatically), click Go to setting at the bottom of the screen to launch Accessibility Settings.
- Tap Navigation Bar under Downloaded services.
- Tap the Use service slider to enable the navigation bar.
- In the dialog box, click OK to allow the navigation bar app to interact with your session.
- View the information for the navigation bar (TL;DR: swipe down to hide, swipe up to expose).
- Tap OK when finished.
- Adjust any settings as needed. In this example, I’ve set the Auto Hide slider to On and the Position in landscape mode slider to Bottom.
Now that a navigation bar has been installed, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to navigate the tablet. By default, the buttons:
- Triangle – Back (last app)
- Circle – home (display the Settings app and the Ergatta app)
- Square – Recents/App overview (task/app select)
On to the annoying stuff!
Configuring screen rotation settings
When you install some apps, they may think the screen is rotated to the left, which makes a few things kind of annoying. To work around this, you’ll want to change the screen rotation settings.
- If your device is not already turned on, boot it to the Select a profile screen.
- Tap the upper-left hand corner of the screen 7 times to drop to the Android desktop or swipe up from the bottom if you have the Navigation bar app installed and running and select Home (the circle icon).
- Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to expose the App Drawer.
- Launch the Amazon Appstore app.
- Search for control screen rotation. The App publisher is ah_apps. Tap Get to install the app. You can find the app here as well.
- If the app doesn’t launch automatically, swipe up from the bottom of the screen (in the unrotated Amazon Appstore, it will be from the right), and then tap Open on the app’s page.
- Under General, move the Start service slider to On.
- Under Select screen orientation, select Landscape.
- Swipe up from the bottom of the page and go back to the Amazon Appstore to confirm that it’s now working.
Yay! Now you can get to the fun stuff!
Installing additional apps
You can either search for the apps you want to install or use the My Apps icon to find apps you’ve already purchased to install. The Amazon Appstore no longer hosts the Hulu, Netflix, or HBO Max apps (likely because they compete with Amazon’s Prime Video app). If you want them, you’ll have to get them elsewhere. So, you can either download them onto your SD card / USB stick and load them like you did the Amazon Appstore app or install a browser (such as Opera) from the Amazon Appstore and just search/download APKs directly.
Notes:
- At this time, it appears that the HBO Max app does not install correctly.
- Some apps (such a Netflix) do picture-in-picture, allowing you to see both the Ergatta screen as well as the video app.
Adjusting media volume
There’s not a volume button on the Ergatta tablet, so to hear your video over the swooshing of the water in the rower, you’ll probably need to adjust the media volume from tablet’s main settings.
To do this:
- If your device is not already turned on, boot it to the Select a profile screen.
- Tap the upper-left hand corner of the screen 7 times to drop to the Android desktop or swipe up from the bottom if you have the Navigation bar app installed and running and select Home (the circle icon).
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Sound.
- Adjust the Media volume slider.
With your volume set, now you’re ready to get going.
Using everything
So, now you’ve got some apps installed and configured. How do you make everything go? Turns out, it’s pretty easy.
To get started, follow these steps:
- Boot the Ergatta tablet.
- If the Navigation bar has survived the restart/boot process, swipe up from the bottom and tap Home (the circle icon). Otherwise, tap the upper-left hand corner of the screen 7 times to drop to the Android desktop.
- From there, swipe up to open the App Drawer and launch the Navigation Bar app (if it’s not already running).
- Launch the video app of your choice.
- Once you’ve selected media to play, swipe up to reveal the navigation bar and select Home. If your media app supports picture-in-picture (PIP), then a thumbnail should be displayed on the desktop.
- Launch the Ergatta app and select a profile.
- Select a workout.
- On the Set up workout page, make sure you have the Music station option set to None to ensure you’re able to hear your media app’s audio and then begin the workout.
- The workout should be displayed with the media app in PIP mode (if supported).
At this point, you can maximize the media app and watch away. You can swipe up on the screen at any time to go back to the Ergatta app.