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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Image recognition for race timing?

Submitted by int2str
int2str writes: Slashdot, Autocross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocross) is a form of motorsports practiced in the US and around the world where car enthusiasts explore the capabilities of their car in an open parking lot or similar suited area. It's point-to-point racing (not closed circuit). Most of these events are organized by car clubs and volunteers.

Timing is usually done with a form of detection beam at start and finish that gets interrupted by the car crossing the beam. Many commercial systems are available. All of these system require the operator to enter the car's number or ID and requires the cars finishing in the order they started. So if one car is not able to finish, the operator has to intervene, or timing is broken.

For closed circuit racing, transponder systems are available to address this problem. But such systems require sensor loops in the track or overhead (bridge setup) and the transponders are expensive.

Do you think it would be possible to design a timing system using off-the-shelf parts and open source solutions to uniquely distinguish about 100 participating vehicles and time them from a start to a finish point, independently of their finishing order?

My initial idea would be:
- Use (web-?)cameras at each end that feed into a Linux based notebook (USB/Ethernet).
- Start recoding still images as fast as possible when motion is detected
- Identify unique shape, numbers, barcode, qr code or similar in the images, that have been attached using a magnet to the vehicle's door.

Difficulties to overcome:
- Camera with high enough shutter speed to get recognizable image of vehicle traveling 30-60mph
- Quickly and accurately identify a unique symbol or shape

So far I've started looking into OpenCV as a possible tool for image recognition, but have not been able to find a capture solution.

Does anybody have experience with something like this?

The solution would be open source and well documented as to benefit the many car clubs around the country and the world.
Power

Submission + - Re-programming the thermostat (watoday.com.au)

Submitted by OzPeter
OzPeter writes: As reported in WA Today, Tony Fadell of iPod fame has been using Nest Labs to design and build a thermostat that learns how you live in your house by following how you manually change the temperature. Once you have taught it how to behave (How the Nest learning Thermostat learns), it then can schedule temperature changes that suit your lifestyle, and help you cut down on energy costs.
NASA

Submission + - Cutting Open a Heatsink Heatpipe to See Inside - Z (frostytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Frostytech gets to the heart of Zalman's CNPS11X heatsink by cutting a section of heatpipe from the CPU cooler to inspect its inner composite heatpipe wick structure. Now THATs an in-depth heatsink review! Interesting photos of the dissected heatpipe's composite wick — sintered copper powder on top and axial groove wick below — that you're unlikely to see elsewhere. In the late 1960's the first commercial heatpipes were used by NASA to stabilize satellite temperatures, now they stabilize multi-core processors.

Comment Re:Shhhh! (Score 4, Insightful) 408

by int2str (#27794519) Attached to: NoScript Adds Subscriptions To Adblock Plus

It's somehow okay now that an extension goes behind the users back and circumvents other plug-ins? Especially a plug-in that most users use presumably to protect themselves against malware and intrusive JavaScript driven ads?

I sure hope the community will step up and create a new open source plug-in that goes "back to the basics" (disable JavaScript per site + whitelist) and people ditch NoScript faster than you can say "WTF!"....

Apparently the NoScript developers (which is btw. the most obnoxious plug-in I currently have installed; re: updates...) heads have gotten a bit to big for their own good.

I can't wait to see the fallout from this one. Hopefully at the end NoScript in it's current form won't exist anymore!

Comment Re:That's it? (Score 1) 594

by int2str (#26631083) Attached to: Progress On Electric Cars

Do you have any references to back this up?
I couldn't find anything about that on their site.

Also, that would mean completely re-configuring the motor layout etc. I highly doubt they would do this at this stage.

Comment Re:That's it? (Score 1) 594

by int2str (#26630253) Attached to: Progress On Electric Cars

The Aptera is rear wheel drive. The "Axle" in the front is actually only the push-rod for the steering. There are no rotating parts exposed in the front (other than the wheels of course).
Power

Submission + - Building an energy efficient always-on PC?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I find it necessary to leave my home PC running 24/7, for things like web or ftp servers, bittorrent, or simply to make sure I don't miss any messages on IRC or my instant messaging client. It has been about 3 years since I built my current PC, and keeping it running all the time uses a lot of juice. With my next PC I would like to do what I can to keep the power-consumption to a minimum, without sacrificing processing power or other features. What should I look for when choosing components for my PC, and what other ways are there to keep the power consumption down?
The Internet

The World's First National Internet Election 297

Posted by samzenpus from the vote-through-the-tubes dept.
InternetVoting writes "Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France's successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?"

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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