DIY Trail counter/ Lap counter

[pi11wizard]

I hope this might be of some use to a club somewhere along the line. I have wired up a DIY trail counter for HMBA to get some usage statistics for our trail at Awaba. After 3 weeks of running so far, all seems to be working quite well (even after all the rain we have had) so I expect it will only ever need some TLC after a bush fire.

Hopefully this sort of data will be able to give us some hard data to fall back on for things like grant applications.

Info on how to build it is here:

http://pi11wizard.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/diy-mountain-bike-trail-counter/

 

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Two way counting.

I'm guessing you could make a two way counter by having two of these next to each other and having a blocking signal between the two. You would need a small pulse generator, (maybe just a capacitor and resistor circuit or maybe a 555 Timer IC), which would block one from operating when the other one is triggered. Make the pulse, say two seconds long, so that the rider has time to pass through the second counter without being counted.
That way you could count how much traffic was headed in each direction, (on a cycle path for example.)
I haven't looked at the circuit closely but I imagine it could be done.