Trampoline Bounce Counter Has Raspberry Pi Automate Away Your Parental Duties

If you have a toddler and a mini-tramp you know the rallying cry of “Mama, Count!”. If you don’t don’t have either of these things, become the hero uncle or aunt by building one for your family members who have been social distancing with a three-year-old monster bundle of joy for the last five weeks. This trampoline bounce counter uses a Raspberry Pi and a distance sensor to stream the bounce count to a nice little web GUI.

The hardware couldn’t be more simple, and there’s a good chance you already have everything on hand. The HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor is a staple in beginner microcontroller kits. It simply lays on the floor pointed up at the bottom of the trampoline, connected to a Raspberry Pi via a resistor divider.

The software is where [Eric Escobar’s] project makes your life easy. He’s included a simple calibration routine that marks the low point of a bounce as you stand still on the tramp. There’s even a systemd service file included to ensure the software is always running, even after reboot. Cumulative bounce count can be seen on a webpage served from the Pi via an AJAX script.

Having a running count is a great first step, and surely a magical new feature of the trampoline that will be loved by the little ones. If that sense of wonder runs out, you could always gamify the system by adding in daily or hourly totals and a high-scores board.

It seems [Eric] is well practiced at automating his responsibilities away. We previously saw him use a Raspberry Pi to control the door of his chicken coop.

14 thoughts on “Trampoline Bounce Counter Has Raspberry Pi Automate Away Your Parental Duties

    1. Out of curiosity I’ve just spent a few minutes googling but only found references to rather acute trampoline related injuries. What is the risk for children who bounce for too long?

    2. Care to cite your sources for such a pernicious claim Elwing? If you choose not to, then your claim is specious nonsense and further commentary made by you will be ignored as uneducated drivel.

  1. I would be way too tempted to add a big assed solenoid to the trampoline kind of like a gigantic pinball bumper. The kid jumps down on it and it launches him 6 feet in the air.

  2. Take a standard cheap £1 pedometer. Remove the spring switch. Solder some wires. Put some tape on one of the loops of one of the springs to insulate it. Attach one wire to the back of the tape and the other to the spring. Tape the pedometer where the child can read it. Or better yet. Just attach the pedometer to the child.

    1. Blurry cats are quite a bit more laid back than their sharper brethren. It’s suspected this evolved in the blurry cat as a defense mechanism so that predators can’t make out facial features of fear, wonder if the blurry cat knows something it doesn’t, and chooses not to mess with such a confident looking creature.

  3. As a person with some experience making humans I’d recommend an upgrade to this project to add amusing bodily noises that vary according to the displacement of the mat, then the kid will be bouncing on it until they are ready for a nap.

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