“A low-power Arduino car counter that works by logging each time a car drives over a rubber tube across the road.
While talking about electronics at work, my colleague metnioned a car counter he’d bought for a large sum of money that never really worked. I had the idea that I could build one myself, from Arduino, and thought I’d give it a try.
Internet searching found the following projects that I used as inspiration:
Arudino people counting, using PIR (passive infra-red)
Car counting using a rubber tube – anonymous project on makercave. This alsoincludes a really useful PDF from Tomorrowlab
Car counting using a rubber tube – Tomorrowlab
Kris Temmermen’s car counter on hackaday
All of these sites were incredibly useful, both for ideas, inspiration and of course code help.
The plan was to use a pressure sensor to record when there is a change in pressure inside a sealed rubber tube, such as when a car drives over it. Simple! I wanted to make it as low-power as possible, so it would run for a good while before needing batteries changed. It’s to be deployed in a rural location, counting cars coming in and out of a car park.
There was then weeks AND WEEKS of experimenting, testing and trialling, but here’s what I ended up with. This assumes you have some experience of using Arduinos, soldering, and coding.”