ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area counting people

TrainWire — You posted a photo of a really effective "crowd warmer" a few months ago. It being February, I'll bet rail patrons would appreciate you being to work that toasty gas lance {with its three-foot flame} into the final people-counter design.

Bjarney:
Depending on the job, there could be 5 of those going at one time. they'll certainly warm you up! Give you an idea, our shop is 100X40, we did a sheet in last january, 0degree's outside, shop started at 60, we were done in three hours, and the shop was at 80, we had doors hanging open.

Maintenanceguy, thanks for the kind words. We try very hard to deliver value for the price we charge. Look me up the next time your in the neighborhood.

Got the basic counter to work Now for the logic to make it count for when people only go through it one way.

TW

I got the gizmo counting people going only one way now , it's the old story, it's not what you know, it's who. Had out of state guests, and he paid for his stay by figuring out it out for me

So how did you get it to count only one way?

We started with your idea of the two beams, and finally settled on a bidirectional counter and a flip-flop ic chip with two photoelectric switches. If the switches are triggered "a then b" then one side of the flip-flop sends a count pulse to the "up" counter. The switches are wired oppositely to the other side of the flip-flop, and if they are triggered "b then a", then it pulses the "down" counter, and the counter subtracts the person who just went "in the out", and then will add them back in when they come back out.

The switches will be mounted at about waist level, about 4 inches apart. It will miss some little kids, but catch most people.

It's not perfect. But it will get us to within a couple of percentage points, for a lot less money than some of the commercial stuff that's out there. Not to mention I learned something. I prefer that to just buying something and sticking it in.

The switches will be built into the gate we will be putting up, with the counter in some sort of a weatherproof box. I have not seen the design (if there is one yet) of the gate or the fenced in area, so that part will be "engineered on the fly". I am hoping that the design of the fence and gate will permit the use of a solar panel to keep this thing working. The photoelectric switches draw about 30 MA, and the counter has it's own battery, so I got a 7.2 AH AGM battery to power the thing. I am trying o avoid having to run high voltage (which in my case is anything more than 12vdc ) to this thing. As per request, when it happens, I will get pictures.

TW

[This message has been edited by Trainwire (edited 03-06-2003).]
edited again as I think of how to say things

[This message has been edited by Trainwire (edited 03-06-2003).]

Man, I can think of about 10 different ways to do this task, but most are too extreme and $$$ to boot!!!

The simpler methods would be like you have done so far; multiple trigger points, electro-mechanical decade counter and something to invert the tally for the countees that exit (done with the R/S or J/K flip-flop).

Something in the Fuzzy Logic realm would be nice. It would capture and database anything moving in a certain direction. $$$ and training the application is a downfall (although I am unsure what the $$$ for such a simple system would be???).

Maybe an elaborate array of proxy switches, pulsing the counter would improve accuracy? Still need to invert the exiting traffic.

Just tossing out stuff.

Keep us informed!

Scott35 S.E.T.

p.s. sounds like a fun project!

Has been a fun project. I started out looking at basic stamps and all sort of logic circuits, but abandoned them as having a really steep learning curve and intitial price.

The fella that came up with this idea uses these curciuts on his trainset. The put his crossing gates up and down as his train goes by.

There is an elbow in the price/accuracy curve. I think that I am at the point of that elbow, to get any more accuracy on the count the price goes up accordingly. The situation does not require the increased accuracy, so I will stop here.

Most of my projects are fun, it's just that the learning curve on most of them goes straight up. Like learning to read the code, and apply that into the real world, or building the network from scratch, or buiding a 5 ton air conditioner from a pile of parts, and put it in where the old one(dated 1932) was. I wind up being my own apprentice.

This forum has been an invaluable help, and I appreciate that.

TW

Just a thought, but could you get those children by running the beam at a diagonal across the opening, one low and one high?