Fill in the "?"

[jcan]

I need to make this happen:

What the most efficient kind of magic I can use in place of the "?"?

A camera will be looking at these lights and using the order they turn on to determine the orientation of an object they are attached to.

 

[alec_t]

How critical is the timing?
The animation has a period of ~1 sec, with each LED lit for ~1/3 sec. Is that what you want?
Do you have the spec of the LEDs you will be using?

 

[Inquisitive]

Looks like a railroad wigwag light

 

[audioguru]

Looks like a railroad wigwag light

No, because cars would sneak through when both lights are off.

 

[jcan]

How critical is the timing?
The animation has a period of ~1 sec, with each LED lit for ~1/3 sec. Is that what you want?
Do you have the spec of the LEDs you will be using?

Ignore the animations speed, its not relevant. The camera captures frames between 5-30 FPS. I'm going to send a pulse to the LED circuit every second and the pulse for the will last ~500ms (I'm still working out the exact timing).

LED01, High, 500ms
LED01, Low
LED02, High, 100ms
LED02, Low, 400ms

I need to make this happen using only one I/O in because I only have one left on this project to work with.

 

[alec_t]

This should do the job

 

[cowboybob]

Just noticed the actual requirements. Back in a bit.

 

[jcan]

I might not be approaching this the best way. I have an ATtiny controlling four motors an IR receiver and that leaves me with one more pin to control some sort of 3D orientation signal.
Here's a quick illustration of what I'm imagining (it's a blimy thing floating in a room with a camera watching the lights):

 

[audioguru]

A red/green LED or a bunch of them can produce red, green or yellow from one signal pin. Is your camera color-blind?

 

[jcan]

A red/green LED or a bunch of them can produce red, green or yellow from one signal pin. Is your camera color-blind?

The camera only sees blobs of IR light (like a Wiimote camera)...so yea it's colorblind. I was just thinking that maybe I can leave one light on and have only the second flash. Then my image analyzer can plot the solid light relative to the flashing one in 3D space to get the orientation.

 

[cowboybob]

The camera only sees blobs of IR light (like a Wiimote camera)...so yea it's colorblind. I was just thinking that maybe I can leave one light on and have only the second flash. Then my image analyzer can plot the solid light relative to the flashing one in 3D space to get the orientation.

OK. So you need infrared LEDs. right?

And no need for a trigger, Right?

Just a steady IR source and a flashing IR source. Correct?