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[IkiKolohe]

Aloha!

Just curious if anyone has ever put a pedometer (or bicycle computer) on their wheel and tracking how far your furry friends have run overnight?

If yes, can you share which you used and how you set it up?  If no, would you be interested?  I'm a techie geek at heart so I am planning on doing this once my girls are old enough to have their wheel!

Mahalo!
Tina

[GrayRodent]

Yes I have actually done that using a reed switch and a magnet that counts revolutions. I ran that to a very simple pedometer that counts strides by closing the contact with great success.

I got a reed switch from radio shack and mounted it behind the wheel far enough that my pets couldn't get to it. Then I marked where the magnet should go and glued it down with hot glue. Then I ran two wires to the pedometer and it really was that simple. Somewhere on our forum I have some data that I'd posted from it.

Now I have a new system although I had to abandon it because it was taking away too much time from other projects. Parts of it are working and others are not. It is the logging software that's giving me some problems but the counts are accurate when it's running.

I found with the 1" bar spacing on the FN-182 that I have that I can use fittings for galvanized electrical conduit. Some designs have wide nuts on them so I was able to mount the reed switch inside of that and use conduit to keep the wiring out of reach of the chins which had been problematic in the past.

That goes to a digital input on the arduino mega knockoff that I have and it sends serial data to a PC based logger. That count resets each time the data is sent so the PC software adds up the count. My intention is to take that one step further and have four evenly spaced magnets to power the switch. That will allow me to calculate the speed of the wheel with some decent precision. That would generate a whole new dimension of interesting data about my pet's activities.

The problem with simply counting rotations is that chinchillas will jump off the wheel and it might keep spinning for 2-3 more rotations before it stops. So the actual distance is not reflected in the data. So there's three options that I've thought of. One is to get the speed and look at the deceleration of the wheel. The software can be programmed to identify the wheel's natural rate of deceleration and filter out the false rotations.

However there is something else I'd like to try and that is to fabricate a mount that will close switch when the chin is on the wheel. The software would analyze the duration between bounces to determine when the animals has left the wheel which may be simpler from a programming standpoint.

Since you have some programming knowledge I recommend messing around with an arduino proto board if you've got the time. Get a kit that has some basic sensors, wires, a breadboard, and some things to do with it. You can probably get by with the cheap knock-off products that are out there but you may be really frustrated if you are trying to learn on potentially defective equipment. After you learn to use it you can alternative boards very cheaply. If you get a kit with an LCD screen you can have a standalone display whatever kind of counting algorithm you want to program.

There are many users with projects you can find and download online.

[IkiKolohe]

LOL - most of that went over my head.  My programming expertise is database driven websites... Give me HTML, SQL and ASP and I can pretty much do anything.  Technical computer stuff I can get to a point, engineering stuff though?  Yikes!!

I found a bicycle computer that's $14, it auto-wakes, you can adjust the "tire size" down to 16" and its wireless so no wires.  I THINK I can get that working.  I didn't think about hot glue for the magnet, that's a great idea!  My girls will be too young for the wheel for quite awhile, but I have ordered it so I can play with it and set it up in an unused level of the cage.  I'm getting 3 stories, but the girls only get 1 level, the top one, to start out with.  Joey will be 4 months old, but Kira will be more like 6 or 8 weeks old when they come over!!

Mahalo!
Tina

[GrayRodent]

Just get the cheapest crummiest pedometer you can find from a dollar store for $1.00. Get two or three in case you break one. The only thing it needs to do is count. Then get go to radio shack and ask for a "reed switch". When a magnet passes over the switch it closes.

Then get two wires and solder them onto the connectors coming out of the switch. If you don't have a soldering iron you can get that at radio shack and get one of those solder practice kits if you'd like to practice on something that supposed to be soldered on first. It's a good skill to have because you can make the wire any length and WHEN (not if) your chinchillas destroy it you can repair it quickly.

Take the pedometer apart and you'll see a little lever inside that has a conductor that brushes against another conductor. They are usually flat pieces of metal you may need to take a file and rough it up or better yet drill a hole through it just big enough for the wire so the solder adheres to it. You can use bell wire or any small gauge wire from radio shack, or less expensively, a hardware store where you can buy it by the foot. (might save $5-10 bucks that way)

So there are two total contacts that close the circuit. Solder those two wires across your reed switch and that should do it.