[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Re: counting bicycles

[Thomas Lockney]

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Fred Smith <fxsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
> Was this discussed further last night? I'd be interested to see what
> approaches are taken on the other side of the crystal's output.
>
> Couple of thoughts:
> For the stat/graph happy folks, it might be interesting to time-stamp
> and store triggers of the device (as cyclists pass).
>
> In the spirit of the original guitar-hero usage, an audio indicator
> could also be triggered as cyclists pass (gas station style) - perhaps
> triggering one of a set of randomized bike friendly sampled audio
> greetings?
>
> (Both of these ideas, of course, add significant back-end computing
> requirements)

Not necessarily for the audio portion -- using good ol' analog
technology could certainly work just fine here. If an Arduino or other
microprocessor is used for the counting, all it would need to do is
trigger an output line that could then control a relay driving the
exact same sort of bell they use at gas stations. Seems like it would
be a nice touch, really -- though with a ton of bikes passing in a
short period of time, anyone in the vicinity might be wanting to smash
that bell to bits in very short order.

~thomas