January 22nd, 2010

We ventured to Kent dining hall yesterday. We thought to ask for permission from the managers and make sure that taking pictures of the exit/entrance however it lead to discovering that we have to go through at least two other people before we can get pictures of the hall. We have their contact information. They have both been emailed about our project details and we requested permission to carry out our project.

The initial testing will still be done in a controlled environment, perhaps an empty hall way at night, just to make sure our equipment is working as intended. Also it would be much easier to fix any problems close to the lab vs running back and forth from the dining hall to the lab every time some small error occurs.

Today we got further on the hardware. We cleaned it up so the wires are not running everywhere and also expanded it to include three trip wires and not just one. The normal LED's function properly; when they IR receiver receives the signal the LED is off, when the signal is blocked from the receiver the receiver is turned off. This is our step in the right direction. For now we have detection. Tomorrow we take it one step further and code the direction of the detection and the accurate count keeping.

Before:

After:

Video: IR Tripwire