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Related

Bottle counter

Former Member
Former Member over 10 years ago

Hi, Im trying to find a suitable sensor to count bottles as they pass on a conveyor.  I want to connect it to an RPi, with PiFace.  Any help would be appreciated.

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  • kas.lewis
    kas.lewis over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member +1
    Personally I have never used a RPi as I feel for almost anything i do it's over kill. If it is a simple project why not use Arduino (not that I have used that much either). Other options are TI Launchpads…
  • gadget.iom
    gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member +1 suggested
    To be honest, for a task this simple I would use a basic microcontroller. it can be done on an Arduino much easier and with fewer external components. Take a look at the following article. It pretty much…
  • gadget.iom
    0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago

    What kind of bottles?

    Metal or plastic tops?

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to gadget.iom

    They would be plastic (HDPE) bottles and also plastic caps.

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  • gadget.iom
    0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    If the bottles are neatly inline you could possibly detect them using a module like this above the caps:

    https://www.bananarobotics.com/shop/Pololu-38-kHz-IR-Infrared-Proximity-Sensor-with-30cm-Range

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  • gadget.iom
    0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Another approach could be beam-break with modules such as these:

    https://www.adafruit.com/products/2167

    Though I'm not sure how transparency of the bottles might affect these. Worth a try though image

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to gadget.iom

    Thanks Paul, that looks like it should do what I want!  I'm guessing that it is compatible with the Raspberry Pi

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  • gadget.iom
    0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Yes. They should be compatible with the PiFace.

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  • kas.lewis
    0 kas.lewis over 10 years ago

    ST recently came out with their flight sence sensor that measures distance (to 50 cm) pretty accurately and they are decently priced as well. That would be an easy way to use a beam breaker but with only needing to position one sensor, it uses I2C.

     

    Kas

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to kas.lewis

    Thanks Paul & Kas, that's given me something to work with.  Do either of you know of any good resources in terms of software to use them with?  I'm pretty new to using an RPi for this kind of application, so it's quite a steep learning curve for me.

     

    Cheers

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  • kas.lewis
    0 kas.lewis over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Personally I have never used a RPi as I feel for almost anything i do it's over kill. If it is a simple project why not use Arduino (not that I have used that much either). Other options are TI Launchpads, Freescale Frdm Boards or even ST Nucleo Boards that comes with a free Keil License for the ARM M0. The ST option would allow you to get the X-NUCLEO-6180XA1 that had the flightsense on the board already. I belive the later two boards can be programed in mbed and the first board can be done in Energia, which is like arduino but for TI boards, all teh boards can be programed in C. I hope that helps a bit.

     

    Kas

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  • gadget.iom
    0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago

    What kind of count output are you looking for?

    LCD? Serial?

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