For part of my capstone project I plan to "tag" every piece of cardio equipment in the REC with some sort of microcontroller that would essentially ping the server when it is in motion. This ping would be put into an array of pings and broadcasted via a web application to show what equipment is "in motion" aka "in use".

This way students would be able to load the web page and see "oh shit all of the treadmills are taken...I guess I'll go later."

I'm sure this is possible some how... but does anybody know of a microcontroller or any other way to do this? I just need to get my hands on 1-2 of them and prove the concept will work and then I'll be given free reign to get more of the sensors.

Was thinking about something like this: http://www.amazon.com/SainSmart-Ultrasonic-Distance-Mega2560-Duemilanove/dp/B004U8TOE6/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1377791180&sr=8-5&keywords=micro+motion+sensor

Broadcasting to an Arduino board...but I wasn't sure if there was a way to program this to keep a realtime array of pings working...?

Great concept; I'm sure there are vibration detectors that could detect the vibrational patterns. You'd only need to track two vibrational graphical patterns to see if the machine is in use or not. My earth science department has an 'earthquake detector' that detects when nearby students jump and graphs it on a screen. I'm sure that could be used to detect individual machine use. Compare the graph of the baseline when in use compared to when not in use.

That would definitely work. I hadn't even thought of a vibration detector. I could definitely set a baseline and when it moves X deviations away from that baseline it would emit the ping. I do need to find the technology where it would emit a ping to the receiver though.

That's the idea. Unfortunately I don't have any clue about wireless transmissions or coding in general. I'm slowly learning though.

Most manufacturers provide tcp/ip and usb stacks.

Of those I have worked with, the majority of microchip's pic32mx series and pic16F8x series support those stacks. The more expensive pic32s even come with a hardware wifi port and dedicated stack. Some these even come in DIL package for easy DIY deployement like the pic32mx2xx and the pic16F

TI's MSP430 F5x/6x mcu have similar hardware and stacks built in.

As for data retrieval and broadcasting, you shouldn't think of clients (cardio machines) pushing their pings but rather have the server (your mcu) poll the clients. Then use IR sensors at feet level to detect users

This post was edited by flyinggoat on Aug 31 2013 02:19pm