Hi everybody, I'm very much a "maker", and I know electroinics and have some familarity with Arduino, and have a general question and would like to dip my toe in the water per-se to see if what I would like to accomplish is can be done with relatively low cost.
I run my dogs as part of an agility troup here in Michigan in the United States. For those unfamilary with the sport, we find ways to burn off our dogs energy while getting them and ourselves some exercize. Pictured below is one of my Welsh Pembroke Corgi's jumping a hurdle.We perform our shows for charity at both indoor arenas as well as outside fairgrounds.
Our group consists of small dogs (like Ben, pictured) that generally clear the hurdle with only an inch or two of distance, to much larger dogs, where their feet still clear the hurdle by a bit, but the dog's body goes over the hurdle by perhaps a foot. (so a fairly large distribution of hurdle clearance differece)
So here is what I could like to accomplish:
When a dog clears the jump, I would like to have one strip of addressable LEDs on mounted to each side of the hurdle light up in a way similar to the old carnival "he-man" attractions where a person swings a mallet hitting a target pad, which usually sending up a weight upwards to hit a bell, but in later versions just had lights that sequentially and additively lit up a bar of lights to indicate success.
A couple ways I'd like to consider approaching it:
#1: I could use an ultrasonic sensor mounted to the base and when a dog passes over the hurdle, the sensor measures the distance and lights a number of the LEDs light up in sort of a sine wave up-and-down look (greater height more leds are light up and then down). The problem I see with this approach is the width of these jumps is about 3 feet and I wonder if a dog jumping the hurdle close to one end will trigger the sensor. Maybe two sensors? Ideas?
#2: I was thinking about using some PIR sensors like shown here on ebay They are cheaper, but I wonder if they can be used in direct outdoor light. They don't need much sensing accuracy, and it is possible to mount the sensor about half way up one of the sides, again triggering when any size dog passes over the hurdle.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to get a day's worth of jump time out of a 9-volt battery, or maybe put in a 3S 12v rechargeable Li-Po battery. In any given day, there is going to be much more idle time than actual time where the LEDs are going to be on.
Finally, to conserve costs, do you think this project can be ported to an ATTINY 85, then the cost per hurdle would be significantly reduced.
Probably my biggest concern is being able to sense something under lots of direct sunlight, then next battery life.
General thoughts or ideas?
Roger
