Arduino helps you ski Copper

posted Feb 11th 2010 7:57am by Mike Szczys
filed under: arduino hacks, led hacks

[Dwight's] been working on a long-term project to add a status board for the ski runs at Copper Mountain ski resort. The board will feature an 8×8 LED module for each run that displays a green O for open trails, a green G for groomed trails, and a red X for closed trails. He’s also got a status board with LEDs embedded in a trail map.

The system relies on SPI for each LED module. An Arduino Mega uses a Xbee module to pull down XML data wirelessly and display it on this board. Since the trail report is already available online it’s just a matter of parsing the data in a useful way.

He’s not quite done with the whole thing yet, but keep an eye out for it if you are planning to ski Copper Mountain.

[via Tom's Guide]

Comments [8]

tagged: 8x8, arduino mega, copper mountain, led, sign, trail report

8 Responses to Arduino helps you ski Copper

AnthonyDi says:

February 11, 2010 at 8:49 am

I like practical use projects like this.

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Larry says:

February 11, 2010 at 9:04 am

As fun as this project might be, it doesn’t help me as a skier. What I would like is some guidance as to which slopes are appropriate for me as a middling skier, which slopes are crowded, which slopes are icy, average skier speed (!)…

On a big mountain like Copper, I can only get a few runs in a day. A project like this that provides info that helps me get the most from those runs would be huge for the average tourist skier.

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Mikey says:

February 11, 2010 at 9:15 am

@Larry, As useful as that may be, I’m betting most of that data is uncollected, sounds like all his mechansim is doing is displaying scraped web data. And regardless, its a cool project. Kudos on this one HaD/Dwight!

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trialex says:

February 11, 2010 at 1:07 pm

Awesome – I used to work at Copper in the Ski School, and now I’m an enthusiastic Arduino hobbyist.

@Larry – this is a start – at least you can see which trails have been groomed, which always makes it easier for beginners.

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Larry says:

February 11, 2010 at 1:34 pm

I agree that this is a very cool project. I was just thinking about the next steps, which seem to be limited by the data that is available to ingest. If Copper is willing, maybe you could estimate things like skier speed or skier numbers/trail. I know a lot of ski resorts make you scan your lift ticket at the lift itself, so you might be able to do some math on the lift times for each rider. Just some ideas…

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PSN Cards says:

February 11, 2010 at 4:51 pm

Seems like a great project, keep progressing.

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googfan says:

February 12, 2010 at 8:48 am

if its a public place, chances are the boards wont last long.

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1freedude says:

March 18, 2010 at 8:54 pm

Awesome! I would put one in my living room if I lived there. I stayed at Cecileville (Colorado Belle Ranch), and that would have fit in perfect!