[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Re: counting bicycles

[Daniel Johnson]

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.

I didn't hear anyone talking about it at the meeting.

> 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).

Time stamping would be good.  If there were double hoses then there
would be the possibility of calculating speed, and from that speed the
distance between wheels.  Etc.  Lots of post processing possibilities.
 But for now just want a count.

> 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?

This is icing.  Last year nothing got done.  I worry that planning too
much will just lead to nothing happening.  Sure get chips with a few
extra GPIO pins in case we would like to add something later, but
sensors with a clean pulse, or a pressure measurement that can be
triggered off of some threshold is the first item.  Or some other
durable sensor.  Plate with a strain gauge perhaps?

Then as there are multiple gates some kind of primative networking.
The Atmel chips seem to have some kind of addressing over serial
support.  CAN bus?