We’ve received an email through for some paid work for an Arduino project - if anybody is interested, please send relevant information through to exec@hsbne.org and we can put you in touch.
I have a small Arduino project which I need to complete at Enoggera for my business. I thought there may be someone in the Brisbane hackerspace/Arduino community who would be interested so I am reaching out to see if you could connect me to some people?
Basically we need to make counters that will count items as they pass through a pipe. We thought to use Arduino’s with LED lights and beams across the pipes. We could code a small program to count the objects as they break the beam. Alternatively we could have a small pressure pad that does the same. There are 48 pipes that we need to rig up with these counters and then we wanted the data to be output onto an Excel spreadsheet.
I can buy all the parts required but I don’t know how to program that code nor what the best way to go about it is.
I was wondering if you could possibly pass this email on or point me in the direction of someone who may be able to assist.
What are the items passing through the pipe. Are they regular shaped and take up most the pipe (tennis balls going down a 70mm pipe) or are they irregular shape travelling down a pipe much larger than them (small teddy bears down a 2 meter wide pipe).
A light beam may have problems and there might be other better solutions. Or maybe even just need multiple light sensors and a hold-off time for irregular shaped things.
If the items have different permeability than free air then change in inductance may be the most reliable way.
Please provide some more info if watching directly or @exec please pass on the question if you know they are not watching.
also … 48 of these pipes …? I don’t think a single arduino will do all that without some sort of multiplexing or extra hardware… or ( unlikely ) 48 arduinos ( which would need 48 usb cables to teh pc …!).
You could have one “master” co-ordinating communications with multiple slaves. Or skip USB and use a RS-485 bus between the lot, polling Modbus/RTU from the host.
This is something I’d be interested in. The approach I would probably take would to use a Wemos to monitor 8 tubes - using 6 in total. I could then setup each one to act as a server on a wifi network and use simple scripts on the PC to get the data. Sounds like it could be fun.