multi-channel frequency measurement for planter monitor

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi I am hoping for advice re the following query. Some background to my query follows:

I am building a planter monitor that will count seed drop through a John Deere 8 row planter. The drop tubes have one photo electric sensor per planter row and I have a working sketch to monitor 1 row.

I need to scale this up to monitor 8 rows simultaneously (assuming this is possible) and I want to wirelessly (bluetooth) the seed counts to an Android tablet mounted in the tractor.

The signal processing/conditioning from the row sensors is relatively straight forward. The maximum pulse count per row is 200 pulses per second.

My query is

  1. Can all of the digital i/o pins be used to undertake pulse counts simultaneously?
  2. Which of the Arduino family of boards would be best suited to this task?
2

We would need to know a little more about your current sensor to make a proper recommendation. Is it analog or digital?

1600 pulses per second is not going to be too difficult for an Arduino. You will have to be careful not to use delay() and you do need to pay attention to how many other things you are doing at the same time. Printing to Serial can slow you down a lot if you're not careful with it.

The main work in this installation is making it withstand normal operation. There is 99% chance that you will plug it in backwards and it's nice to be protected against that kind of simple mistake. Keeping the dust out of it, keeping the water out when you hose it down, all of those issues need to be addressed.