huanix

This is just a rough idea at the moment, but I expect to develop it this weekend:

I have started participating in triathlons lately, and one of the necessary evils I’ve discovered is the need to practice swimming by doing laps in a pool. I want a way to keep track of my laps, and to keep track of my progress over time. Finis has a “swim lap tracker” at $70 that keeps track of your laps as you swim, but I don’t have $70, and I think I could do a better solution for cheaper.

I’ve got several old laptops laying around; the plan is to use a serial input linked to a simple php script to keep track of my current laps and store the results in a database. The frontend should tell the the number of laps I’ve done and the time of the last lap (color coded for time compared to average?). Further, so I don’t have to touch the laptop when I’m done, the serial input device should create a key combo that will tell the laptop to shutdown.

The serial input should be on a telephone line type plug that will terminate in or at the water on a waterproof button … maybe a big red one Total cost should be about $15 for the button, I have everything else.

The laptop will run debian or xubuntu - the minimum i would need to get a browser up on a gui. it’ll need apache, php, and mysql.

–Update
I’m still gathering resources, I’ll create my list here:

• google search term: linux 9-pin serial input keyboard button
  • http://linuxfocus.org/English/January2001/article186.shtml
  • http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/IO-Port-Programming.html
• sourceforge.net searchterm: serial key mapping
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/scontrol/
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/slsnif/
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/jsbuttons/
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/serial-io/