It doesn't make sense for that device alone, but the vendor probably supplies all the different equipment in the gym. Using a tablet simplifies their supply chain, deployment, debugging/repair, app update process and simply supports more features. There are probably some connectivity features on the device, for example. When you look at all of that together, it's hard to argue it's wasting money.

It's like complaining about Electron apps. For sure I love small native apps like everyone else. But, if Electron enables a company to ship cross-platform apps and iterate faster, who am I to say no?

(I happen to have seen some of those tablets in diagnostic mode and poked around a bit. These things are much more complicated than you think.)

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rswail 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Once you price in the cost of integration, plastics, ROHS, CE and other regulatory/certifications, the extra cost of an Android tablet which already has a lot of that starts to make sense.

If you also add in the extra ease of things like device management across fleets etc, it becomes a no-brainer for the manufacturer.

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pjmlp 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, doesn't look like to me, and a plain ESP32 with a touch screen would do the job for displaying a weight bar with plus, minus and reset count buttons.

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usrusr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And then you get to a cardio unit where you want a completely different set of features and have to start over. Going lean on hardware only makes sense when you push out a very high number of units, when you have to deal with battery constraints or when you just have a lot of intertia, the combination of existing codebase and developer filter skillset.

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pjmlp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Except all the machines have the same feature set I mentioned.

Agree that wanting to hire cheap developers is why they did it that way, the current interface is so laggy that I would bet it is Web based, on top of running Android for nothing.

	▲	rswail 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's not a problem of the platform, but is a problem of the developers. The extra cost of an Android capable tablet (maybe $200 especially wholesale) is a minimal hardware cost considering the overall price of the equipment is in the thousands. But finding good embedded developers is a very difficult problem to solve, much easier to find Android app developers and then you get the Android eco-system for free like device management, OTA updates etc. Put all the sensors and controls on a USB bus and you need one or two actual embedded developers to deal with the drivers and the rest of the developers can build the UI that people see. In the case of a gym, the person buying the equipment is the customer, not you. They want features that will make you "sticky" to the gym, plus save costs on training you on how to use the equipment.