I had a buddy who’s relatively new treadmill was shutting down after a few minutes of use.  He didn’t want to fix it so he gave it to me to do what I do best, use it in some strange way. 

This treadmill had a perfectly functioning DC motor and I thought I could bypass the control board to use the DC motor as a generator if I spun it by walking on the treadmill.

The plan was to spin the DC motor by walking on the treadmill and then feed that power to various electronic devices.

 The DC motor had a voltage output that varied based on how fast I walked/ran.  Because I wanted to power a TV I needed to have AC instead of DC power.  To do that I used an inverter but the inverter needed a consistent 12V output. 

I fed the power from the DC motor into a voltage converter in order to create a constant 12v supply.  I then fed that 12v supply into a power inverter which converted the DC to AC power.  I was able to power a small TV as well as a number of LED bulbs simply by walking on the treadmill.