So I recently purchased an Arduino Uno to just play around with and I realized that it could actually be a fairly useful tool for me.
My goal:
Me and two friends have been working on a video game called Mortal Wombat: (www.mortalwombats.org). The game isn't anywhere near finished but we are only doing it for fun and taking our time. Regardless, I like to check on the amount of hits our website gets. I want the Arduino to be able to somehow interpret the number of views to our website every day.
My current process:
Rather than using a LCD display with the exact number of views, I chose to just use 8 LEDs stacked on my breadboard as a sort of bar graph (I made a paper cover to dull the lights and to make the system look more like a bar graph). If I have 0 views, one white light comes on at the bottom. If I have between 1 to 5 views, then a pink light above that white light also turns on. This keeps up with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and finally purple (using my chosen amount of views needed to light up each LED).
Things needed (or wanted):
Right now I have a variable ("views") that I change manually just to test my circuit. I need that to be controlled by the number of requests to my site. (I do not have ethernet or wifi shield.) I saw some things on this online but I couldn't really integrate those things into my code. Some people put an image on their site that has to be requested and then the Arduino somehow counts that. Someone else also gave a tutorial on how to use an application called Processing to link my Arduino to the internet just through my Macbook (which is the constant power source for my Arduino). This is by far my main problem.
I also want this view counter to reset everyday. It would be nice to do this at about 3am EST because some nights I'm up late and that's about the time I consider a day to start/end. If people view our website at 1am, I feel like that should count towards the daily total of the previous day.
Another feature that would be great is the ability to turn off the lights so they don't light up my room when I want to sleep, but still have the count going, so when I click a button or something to turn the lights back on, the daily view count is still the same as when I turned off the lights (as opposed to just unplugging the Arduino.)
I will happily post pictures and code if anyone needs them or wants them!
Thanks!
-Alex