I’m new to this forum and Arduino so I’ll try my best to explain what advice I’m looking for.
In simple terms (the way I like it) I want to set up 4 IR. sensors to an Arduino board. The IR. sensors are to count 4 individuals lines. The counts from each of the 4 I’d like to be displayed on an overhead projector. Now the only way I can think of doing this is via my laptop via serial or something. To be honest I can’t figure out the best route and I’m finding it difficult to google as I don’t know what I’m googling for.
The 4 individuale counts want to be big and bold and live updating (upon each count) I’d thought of visule Basic or something ?.
I’m really wanting a push in the right direction. This is for a project at a school I work at, something interesting for the kids there.
Advice would be really appreciated as I’m looking at this project to jump start my in to many more projects.
I don’t know about the rest, but it wasn’t really clear what you are trying to count. Time of passage, like a finish line? Number of times passed? Intensity of IR illumination? In order for IR sensors to work it needs to be illuminated with IR. What’s going to do that? Also, it’s not clear to me with what you do mean with “lines”.
I understand that you want to project these numbers (whatever they mean) on a screen. Sending over serial to a laptop/PC is a possible solution. But you’ll have to program something that displays that to the monitor or grahpics output. We don’t know if you have that level of knowledge, or what languages you are familiar with. The suggested VGA board seems ok. It requires a proprietary programming environment though. But when I looked at it just now it is reported out of stock with indeterminate duration. I have no serious alternative to offer in this regard. I mean, an arduino is technically capable of generating a crude VGA signal, but this is not for beginners to take up as a project.
The IR. sensors are to count plastic discs dropped in to a tube and there’s 4 tubes and so 4 sensors. I wanted to elberate on showing the counts results on 7 seg display as the results have to be seen from a distance and by many. I’ve found a really good blog on using the very same controller to do exactly what I’m looking at attempting my self, the only diffeance is the blog uses lcd. PC. Screen and I want to use overhead projector.
I’ve purchased the controller and I’m awaiting delivery. But I’ve also purchased many more components to do some simpler projects to wet my toe with Arduino.