Digital Door Sensor

[Alpaca]

Hi everybody!

Im new here and wanted to say hi!

I am interested in building a simple digital counting system to see how many times I go up my stairs every day. My idea is basically to have one of those IR sensor and reflector door annunciator type things hooked up via usb to my computer. Ideally it would be a usb connection to my computer because that is just simple and I can code the counting software with a simple input.

Does anyone here know if those types of sensors exist? If not, does anyone have any idea how to get that signal into a computer?

Thank you very much! I have a software background but not a hardware one, so simple is better.

 

[Alpaca]

any help?? please??

 

[KMoffett]

For starters, Google: USB counter

Ken

 

[shrtrnd]

You can try and IR sensor, but you've got loads of other options:
Proximity switches of all types, photo-detectors that would detect the light change as
somebody walked by the detector. Visible or IR lamp shining across the stairway to a
photo-detector. Hell, a tape-switch on one of the steps would work, like the old bell-ringing
switches they used to have a gas stations to tell them when a car pulled in.
There have got to be plenty of other ideas. The systems are in regular use in most
small stores I go into, so there HAVE to be plenty of different 'people-detectors' available
that Google can produce for you (as noted by KMoffett).