Bite alarm for fishing

[Jasoncolcomb]

I'm looking to make a bite alarm using the optical sensors from a wheeled mouse for a PC and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on components and any thoughts. Looking to run on either 9v or 6v dc power. I want to use the optics from the mouse to detect line movement in both directions with an audible and visual (LED)alarm. Completely new to designing circuits although have a good understanding on basics. Any help much appreciated.

[danadak]

You could consider using accelerometers for sensing a fish. You would
have to do some testing to eliminate casting and line retrieve acceleration.
My guess is a combination of dT and dVelocity/dT could be effective filters
to eliminate non fish effects. Additional effects to be tested due to species.

Another possibility is some mechanical mod to a hook / strain gauge a poss-
ibility. Or piezo element for stress detection.


Regards, Dana.

[Jasoncolcomb]

The idea would be to have a box mounted on a bank stick with the rod resting on it with the line going through a 'v' onto a wheel which would be attached to a disk with holes in to interrupt the optics. I have seen inside a mouse with a ball that this is how they work. I need to convert the up and down movement of the mouse to a signal to make a noise/flash a led. I have attached some images of the type of design i am looking for. Buying one is so much easier, but where is the fun in that!!
Thank you

[alsetalokin4017]

Heh.... I was writing this post while you made yours above....   

I'm looking to make a bite alarm using the optical sensors from a wheeled mouse for a PC and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on components and any thoughts. Looking to run on either 9v or 6v dc power. I want to use the optics from the mouse to detect line movement in both directions with an audible and visual (LED)alarm. Completely new to designing circuits although have a good understanding on basics. Any help much appreciated.

The wheeled mouse uses chopper wheels to interrupt a light beam from an LED as detected by a phototransistor or photoresistor or photodiode. You would probably be better off by using only the chopper wheel (and its mechanical support) from the mouse and building the electronics portion from scratch, although you might be able to pull the sensor and LED out of the mouse as well.

The first problem to solve would be coupling the fishing line motion to the chopper wheel.  I suppose a good design for this idea might be a box you could clamp to the fishing pole above the reel, and then once you have made your cast and taken up slack, you could loop the line through-into the device, where it would somehow engage the chopper wheel.

The rest of the circuit would use a power supply for the LED, and an op-amp or comparator to "read" the output of the sensor on the other side of the chopper wheel, along with a simple oscillator to generate the tone. Or simply use a simple microcontroller like an Arduino Pro Mini, which could handle all the functions of reading the chopped signal from the sensor and generating the tone and light alarms. This would make it very simple to set various parameters like how much line motion counts as a "strike", etc.