Hi guys ( and gals ? )
I need a prototype built which basically shows whether several (say 10) small compartments are occupied or not. Thinking this will be via a LED display unit red light unoccupied green occupied. Dosent have to be too sensitive as oobjects will def block sensor.
Anyone interested let me know with an indication of rates
Look forward to working with you and happy to answer any questions
Hi i think just Led sensor to determine if something is in a material pocket / poutch ....do i need to sepcify type ? Needs to be efficient as will run on batteries
Thanks for showing interest
The type of sensor you use will impact the type of Arduino you use. The Uno only has 6 analog inputs. If the 10 sensors are analog, then you'll need an Arduino Mega with 16 analog inputs or will need an extender.
BUT - if you want to save power and if the 10 sensor-indicator pairs are all independent I'd recommend using two ATtiny44/84 chips working in parallel; 5 pairs each.
Machless:
Hi i think just Led sensor to determine if something is in a material pocket / poutch ....do i need to sepcify type ? Needs to be efficient as will run on batteriesThanks for showing interest
If it is a material pocket / pouch, then these are not rigid compartments to which a sensor transmitter / receiver pair could be affixed to the walls. Or have I misunderstood something ?
Some phones can detect if they are in their own pouch by a magnet arrangement, but that may not be appropriate for your application. I guess you have to give more details of exactly what you envisage.
Did you see my PM? I've built systems like this before, it can be trivially easy or very difficult depending on the details.
The totally dead simple way is an SPDT microswitch to detect the object and it switches one of two LEDs depending on state - occupied/not occupied.
Beyond that are inductive proximity, magnetic, load cell, reflective optical, through-optical, eddy current, capacitive, etc. sensors, all of which depend on the type of object you want to detect, its size, weight and the space in which it is.
Hi -sorry traveling right now so will reply to all PM's later - sorry for not being clear enough. compartments are material pockets in a bag / satchel ...unlikely to be ridgid, probably canvas or leather. Sensors should idealy be as flat as possible so they don't stop things getting put in and also don't take up much space on the reverse of the pocket. items will not always be heavy so a physical switch relying on weight is unlikely to work. They may also be semi transparent, so any LED sensor will need to figure out "normal" parameters and trigger on abnormal event ( im assuming you can tell the sensor to look for reflective readings between x & y ( now really showing my ignorance). Having said that i've no idea what , magnetic, load cell, , through-optical, eddy current, capacitive, etc. sensors are so reflective optical might not be the best.
Each pocket needs to have a status indocator on the outside of the pocket ( full or empty) so I'd be looking for some sort of flat LED display ( simple red or green will do but if there are more graphical e.g thumbs up thumbs down indicators, then interested to know about it)
There's no need for the system to be "always on" so a mechanisim for the user to perform a status check on the bags contents is required - usually at the start of the journey - something elegant will be the challange ( perhaps a small photo cell on the handle which the user can cover with their thumb or when the bag is lifted a 10 second display - that can be worked out
so in simple terms whan i put anything in a pocket ( from phone to polythene bag ) a display on the outside changes from "empty" to "occupied"
Display should be about 0.5" x 0.5# and as mentioned earlier I'm targeting 10 compartments of various sizes
Hope the above makes sense - if not post or PM ...I'll be checking in a few hours
Graeme
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Designs work best when a "systems" approach is taken.
In this case you have an existing storage location, made of an unknown material ("probably canvas or leather"), of unknown characteristics ("unlikely to be rigid"), that will be holding objects of unknown size, unknown material (may/may not be heavy, may be translucent plastic, etc...) and you want to detect the presence of this/these objects.
The range of possibilities makes finding a suitable design unlikely.
Here's my suggestion: think of the holders/pouches and the detector as a system. This means that you have to constrain the possibilities. If you can put a rigid "box" in each pouch to hold the material, or reshape the pouches so the location of anything put in them will be known (wire frame, springs, etc.), then it becomes far, far easier to think about solutions.
e.g., it's pretty simple to detect a 3cmx2cm steel plate in a 3.1x2.1cm wooden drawer. It's far harder to detect a "roughly 3cm object" in a "roughly 12 cm plastic" bag accurately.
Thanks an d understand your point. The bag design will try to make it as easy as possible for the solution ie make pocket sizes as close to the intended contents but i guess there's a point where the solution needs to be clever enough to anticipate real life variables. Suffice to say that any sensor say1/2"from the bottom of the pocket will caputre 95% of "traffic" which is fine for the purposes of the prototype
Hope that helps