This is a little project I am going to try to take on because
the cost of a device available commercially is off on another
planet.
My wife has a live bait business, part of that involves delivering
bait fish to bait and tackle shops. She has to count the buggers,
and the count always is off regardless of WHO counts them. I started
looking around for a fish counting device and found one that uses
a optical scanner to count them as they go through a sluice. The optical
part uses IR LED's to illuminate, and the detector or scanner uses
what appears to be a column of detectors on the other side of the
sluice, as a fish goes by it the detectors see the change in IR flux
and can detect when one fish is ahead of the tail of the first fish
thereby not opening all of the optical path.The fish will be anywhere
from 3-6 inches in size.
The manufacturer of this device wants more than $5K for it, I suppose
that is ok for some government operation that has deep pockets but
at $0.25/fish she will have to catch a lot of fish to pay for it, she
also has to pay a truck used to deliver them and the guy and boat who
actually goes out and catches them.
The hardware does not look to be that great a deal. It is probably in
the software where the cost is.
My idea would be to feed the data from the sensors into the parallel
port and read it at a rate such that I get each fish as it goes down
the sluice.
Now my question is this, do any of you have a idea of where I should
start with this one. The hardware is a no brainer, I can get IR sources
and detector arrays, I can build the sluice and other material, but I
will need to come up with some software that can count the fish as the
go in front of the detector. Has anyone done anything similar in terms
of software?
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Chuck Hast
Telecomms Consultant, Utility Partners.
WEB www.utilpart.com
Office number: 813.282.8828 x 1175
C-phone number: 813.765.6743
E-mail: wchast@utilpart.com
SMS < 150 characters: 8137656743@mobile.att.net
ARS KP4DJT
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going out
and
having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn and twisted
metal."
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