Hello from the Canton Hacker and Maker Place

[CantonHacker]

Hello,

My name is Bill Locke and I am the president and founder of the Canton Hacker and Maker Place right down the road from you! Several of our members are getting in to whoop racing and are working on creating gates with sensors on them to detect that you made it through the hoop. I was wondering if you guys would like to come down and let us know your input on the design and functionality?

 

[buzzbomb]

I'm just a member on the forum. I just wanted to say that what you are describing sounds like a truck load of fun!

 

[CantonHacker]

here is our concept. different sized gates with multiple colored LED's. Light up the first gate green, next gate blue. when you go through the first gate it will flash so everyone watching knows you went through it. then it will turn off and the blue one will turn green and the next one will light up blue and so on. or what ever colors make most sense. The problem we see with all the other gates is they use RFID and that seems to only tell you that you were close to the gate. We want to design one that only trips when you go through it.

 

[buzzbomb]

Just a thought: How about infrared? You know those checkout belts at the supermaket? They've two little lenses where you want the items to stop moving down the belt. One transmits and the other receives and when the beam is broken, the belt stops. Pick the item up, the belt resumes motion until the beam is broken again and it stops.

I remember seeing "spy" toys that had a similar system that would play an alarm if the beam is broken. Seems like if you put the transmitter at the top and the receiver at the bottom, it might work. If it's too narrow a beam you do a pattern at points along the circumference. I don't know if there's an issue with the beams crossing, it'd be fun to find out.